IRLF 


FORCINGS 

of  &he  NEW 


STUDIES  IN 
SOCIALISM 


Franklin  H.  WentwortK 


>- 


Oirr 


Estate  of 

Thomas  J.  Mooney 


(A) 


Forgings 
of  the 

New 


Studies  in   Socialism 

By 
Franklin  H.  Wentworth 

h 
Author  of  "Wendell  Phillip?,"  "The  Pride  of  Intellect,"  etc. 


New  York 

The  Socialist  Literature'  Co. 
15  Spruce  St. 


Copyright  1907 
by  Franklin  H.  Went  worth 


AKIKL  PRESS 

MASS. 


**<1.  ~t+~r'f~"L 


CONTENTS 


The  price  of  cleanliness    ....     Page    i 

Consider  the  lilies u      J5 

As  the  wheels  turn "     22 

The  dragon's  teeth "     26 

Tom's  a'  cold "34 

Does  it  seem  fair  to  you?  .       .       .       .     "     45 

Jimmie,  the  weaver "53 

The  creeping  dark **     65 

How  far  the  little  candle —  .       .       .       .  "     71 

Renunciation "75 

Manhood's  crucible "85 

The  hero "     90 

The  philanthropist "95 

The  flowers  of  a  grant  of  land         .       .     "   101 

Imagination "112 

The  long  procession "117 

The  love  that  is  to  come       .       .       .       .  "   131 

Good  and  evil "   J35 

The  higher  struggle "140 

She  who  is  to  come u   144 

When  the  earth  trembles      .        .        .  "   152 


M30101 8 


TO  THOSE  WHO  BELIEVE  IN  THE  POTENCY 
OF  THE  HUMAN  SPIRIT 


THE    PRICE    OF    CLEANLINESS 

It  is  beautiful  to  be  clean. 

Isn't  it? 

Isn't  it,  you  sweet  young  girl  ? 

Clean  bodies  in  clean  linen  are  almost  a 
fleshly  deity,  aren't  they  ? 

After  being  down  in  the  city's  grime  and 
soot,  isn't  a  clean  waist  a  luxury  ? 

To  come  out  of  your  bath  and  clothe  your- 
self in  clean  linen ;  that  makes  even  one's 
enemies  seem  far  away  and  unimportant, 
doesn't  it? 

But  if  the  clean  waists  are  not  home  from 
the  laundry,  and  you  have  to  slip  your  clean 
body  into  the  soiled  one  again,  how  it  changes 
things ;  your  enemies  seem  near  and  exas- 
perating then, — don't  they,  sweet  young  girl  ? 

But  now  comes  the  laundry-wagon,  bright- 
ly painted  and  clean ;  the  sprightly  driver 
bounds  up  the  steps  and  rings  the  bell,  and 
in  a  moment  Mary  hangs  the  bundle  on 
your  chamber  door,  gives  a  light  tap,  and 
goes  away. 

You  take  in  the  bundle,  and  your  enemies 
sink  away  again  into  obscurity.  You  forget 
about  'em. 


Forgings  of  the  new 

You  open  the  bundle  with  a  yank  at  the 
string. 

There  are  the  clean  waists, — and  the  clean 
other  things. 

What  have  they  cost ;  what  is  the  price  of 
all  this  cleanliness,  sweet  young  girl  ? 

Eighty-seven  cents  the  laundry-list  says. 
That's  all  it  costs  you. 

Cheap  enough  ;  isn't  it  ? 

Thats  all  it  costs  you. 

But  that  isn't  all  it  costs. 

Oh  dear,  no,  sweet  young  girl ;  it  costs 
much  more  than  that. 

Go  home  with  the  bright  wagon  after  it 
completes  its  rounds ;  turn  into  the  alley 
with  it,  and  stop  where  it  stops. 

There  is  a  square  building  of  rough  brick, 
fronting  the  alley. 

It  has  two  little  windows,  close  to  the 
ground. 

One  of  them  is  closed ;  you  cannot  see 
through  it. 

The  other  is  open,  so  we  may  see  what's 
going  on  inside. 

Let  us  stop  and  peep. 

Ugh  !  what  a  foul,  wet  odor !     It's  worse 
than  the  alley  smells. 
2 


The  price  of  cleanliness 

The  clothes  are  being  washed.  Out  of 
them  are  being  steamed  the  muck  and  soot 
and  grime  that  are  absorbed  from  the  outside, 
and  the  humors  of  the  body  that  are  absorbed 
from  the  inside. 

It  is  nasty  breathing,  this  effluvium.  You 
notice  it  from  the  outside.  When  it  is 
breathed  all  the  time,  though,  one  gets  accus- 
tomed to  it. 

There  are  girls  down  there  in  the  steam ; 
you  can  see  them  moving  about.  How  they 
are  hustling !  One  would  think  a  demon 
was  driving  them. 

They  have  been  hard  at  it  since  seven 
o'clock. 

In  Winter  they  quit  at  six  ;  in  the  Summer 
they  work  till  ten  or  eleven,  sometimes  till 
midnight,  without  extra  pay.  Shirtwaists 
come  in  the  summer. 

And  on  their  feet,  too.  They  only  sit 
down  during  their  half  hour  at  noon. 

Think  of  that,  sweet  young  girl. 

Ten  hours  on  their  feet ; — in  the  summer, 
fifteen ; — working  their  arms  and  backs  in 
that  foul  atmosphere. 

If  you  did  that  for  one  day,  you'd  want 
to  rest  for  a  week,  wouldn't  you  ? 

3 


Forgings  of  the  new 

But  these  girls  must  be  there  promptly  at 
seven  the  next  morning  ;  and  every  morning. 

Suppose  there  should  be  a  day  or  so  in  a 
month  when  they  are  not  well ;  days  on  which 
you  may  lie  in  bed,  or  take  your  ease  about 
the  house  ?  Do  you  suppose  personal  indis- 
position is  considered  in  their  case  ? 

No. 

Back-breaking  labor  during  the  ten  or  fif- 
teen hours,  just  the  same,  for  them. 

You  never  thought  of  that,  did  you,  dear  ? 
You  don't  think  much  of  anything  ;  do  you  ? 
Your  mother  did  not  think  much  of  any- 
thing before  you, — unless  she  were  a  working- 
woman  ;  —  and  if  you  have  daughters  they 
won't  think  much  of  anything. 

And  yet  the  suffering  of  these  girls  is  the 
price  paid  for  your  cleanliness. 

Not  the  price  you  pay.     The  price  they  pay. 

Look  at  them  through  the  window. 

Wan,  tired,  desolate,  God-forsaken  look- 
ing slatterns. 

Why  should  they  care  about  their  appear- 
ance if  no  one  else  cares  ?  Drudge,  drudge, 
drudge  from  daylight  till  dark,  and  on  into 
the  night. 

For  what  ? 


The  price  of  cleanliness 

From  $1.50  to  $9  per  week. 

Two  or  three  out  of  the  eighteen  or  twenty 
girls  get  seven,  eight,  and  nine  dollars. 

All  the  rest  get  less  than  six. 

There  is  one  with  a  gap  in  her  mouth 
where  two  teeth  ought  to  be.  That's  hor- 
rible ; — a  toothless  young  woman.  She  ought 
to  go  to  the  dentist. 

But  where  is  she  to  get  time  to  go  the 
dentist ;  and  where  will  she  get  the  money 
to  pay  him  ? 

You  never  thought  of  that,  did  you,  dear? 
Mother  has  always  looked  so  carefully  after 
your  teeth.  You  had  no  responsibility  about 
it,  except  the  bore  of  going  to  the  dentist. 

There  is  another ;  pale,  morose,  shuffling 
about. 

"  She's  been  here  a  year,"  the  driver  whis- 
pers. 

"  She  is  only  seventeen.  You'd  think  she's 
thirty,  wouldn't  you  ?  " 

The  driver  says  she  came  last  spring  ;  bux- 
om, sprightly,  gay ; — off  a  farm  somewhere. 

The  end  of  the  summer  finished  her. 

She  was  used  to  the  sunshine. 

"  It's  so  blamed  hot  down  there  in  the 
summer.  They  don't  get  no  air.  That  lays 

5 


Forgings  of  the  new 

the  best  of  'em  out,"  says  the  driver.  "  I'm 
all  right  on  the  wagon,  but  I  couldn't  stand 
that.  It  'ud  kill  me ;  but  women  seem  to 
stand  it,  somehow." 

Yes,  they  seem  to  stand  it,  somehow. 

They  stand  it  about  three  years. 

Then  what  becomes  of  them  ? 

What  are  you  going  to  be,  sweet  young  girl? 

A  wife,  you  hope, — perhaps  a  mother? 
You  need  not  blush.  That's  your  training. 
It's  no  shame  to  be  a  mother.  You  used  to 
love  to  play  with  dolls.  That's  the  mother 
instinct. 

What  are  these  girls  going  to  be  ?  These 
physical  wrecks  ?  These  broken  and  wheez- 
ing hacks  ? 

Does  any  man  want  such  a  girl  for  a  wife  ? 

No  one  wants  her  for  a  wife. 

Does  any  one  want  her  for  a  mother  ? 

No  one  would  say  she  was  fit  for  mother- 
hood. 

They  would  not  have  her  even  in  a  house 
of  prostitution. 

I  am  sorry  to  say  this,  dear.  I  know  it 
shocks  you.  I  only  say  it  because  it's  true. 

I  want  you  to  realize  what  it  costs  to  keep 
you  clean. 
6 


The  price  of  cleanliness 

To  make  prostitutes  of  women  is  an  un- 
speakable crime ;  but  to  make  of  women 
creatures  not  even  fit  to  be  prostitutes,  what 
is  that  ? 

What  do  you  say  ?     The  laundryman  ? 

Oh,  no.  It  isn't  his  fault.  He  lives  upon 
less  than  you  do.  He  works  harder  and 
does  not  consume  so  much  as  your  father 
does. 

He  has  to  compete  with  other  laundry- 
men. 

Do  you  see?  That's  where  we  touch 
something  vital.  That's  where  the  system 
has  to  be  considered. 

Not  the  laundry  system .   The  social  system . 

The  main  stay  of  the  laundry  business  is 
the  apprentice.  The  apprentice  is  taken  on 
at  $1.50  per  week.  A  girl  is  an  apprentice 
until  she  insists  on  more  pay.  She  may 
have  worked  a  year.  If  she  is  still  vigorous 
and  able  she  may  get  another  dollar  a  week. 
If  not,  she  can  go  and  apply  to  some  other 
laundry  for  a  job.  It  depends  on  the  "  labor 
market."  If  there  is  a  lot  of  homeless,  six- 
teen-year-old girls,  they  keep  the  wage  down 
to  $1.50  a  week  by  bidding  against  one  an- 
other for  the  chance  to  work. 


Forgings  of  the  new 

The  laundryman  must  have  prompt  and 
reliable  service. 

If  after  working  from  seven  in  the  morn- 
ing until  midnight  in  the  summer  heat  a  girl 
should  over-sleep  and  come  late  the  next 
morning,  she  can  go. 

Sickly  women  are  a  nuisance  in  any  busi- 
ness. 

But  when  they  go, — where  do  they  go  ? 

It  is  because  we  ask  the  question — only — 
and  do  not  seek  an  answer  to  it  that  we  can 
sleep  at  night. 

Let  us  go  round  and  peep  into  the  iron- 
ing room.  Both  windows  are  open  here. 
Hot,  isn't  it  ? 

See  those  girls  who  are  operating  the  iron- 
ing machines.  To  work  those  foot-levers 
they  have  to  stand  for  ten  hours  practically 
on  one  foot. 

The  weight  of  the  body  all  day  long  is  on 
that  one  leg. 

It  would  kill  anyone  but  a  stork; — or  a 
woman ;  a  woman  who  has  to  do  it  or  starve. 

See  the  hot,  tired  look  of  that  one.  The 
sweat  is  running  down  her  face  and  neck. 
Her  rag  of  a  waist  is  open  at  the  throat ;  her 
bosom  is  half  uncovered.  It's  so  hot  she 


The  price  of  cleanliness 

does  not  care.  The  less  clothing  the  better. 
She  would  stifle  in  your  collar. 

She  does  not  mean  to  be  indelicate.  She 
has  not  thought  about  it.  Working-women 
don't. 

She  is  thinking  only  of  getting  your  waist 
ironed. 

Don't  you  know,  dear,  how  your  little 
slipper  taps  your  chamber  floor  in  impatience 
if  the  laundry  is  late.  That  miserable  laundry. 

Now  you  see  the  girls  are  doing  the  best 
they  can. 

They  are  giving  their  lives  to  keep  you 
clean. 

They  haven't  any  other  thing  to  give. 

No  relaxation  ;  no  pleasure  ;  their  Sundays 
spent  in  limp  collapse,  dreading  the  morrow's 
coming. 

But  you  have  your  clean  linen. 

And  you  have  your  clean  conscience :  so 
long  as  you  do  not  know  the  infamy  of  which 
you  are  a  part. 

When  you  know  this,  sweet  young  girl, 
you  will  look  out  upon  life  with  different 
eyes. 

When  you  know  this,  you  will  see  the 
blood  of  these  girls  who  are  unfit  to  be 

9 


Forgings  of  the  new 

wives ;  who  are  unfit  to  be  mothers ;  who 
are  unfit  even  to  be, — you  know  what  I  said ; 
— you  will  see  their  blood  on  everything  that 
comes  from  a  laundry. 

When  you  go  into  your  bathroom,  you 
will  see  their  bathroom. 

Did  you  ever  see  a  bathroom  in  a  cheap 
boarding-house  ?  (  Think  of  the  boarding- 
house  you  must  live  at  when  you  are  get- 
ting $1.50  to  $6  a  week  and  buy  your  own 
clothes ! ) 

The  bathroom  in  a  cheap  boarding-house 
would  make  you  shudder,  dear. 

You  would  be  afraid  of  leprosy; — to  go 
into  it. 

No  one  ever  cleans  it*  The  plaster  is 
broken  in  the  walls.  The  tub  is  discolored 
tin. 

And  there  is  no  hot  water. 

Only  a  cold-water  faucet. 

A  worn,  bloodless  girl  cannot  get  into  ice- 
water. 

You  see  it  does  cost  something  to  be  clean, 
after  all. 

Your  nice,  tiled  bathroom,  with  its  im- 
maculate porcelain  tub ;  soft  rug  to  step  out 
upon ;  and  all  the  hot  water,  and  soap,  and 

10 


The  price  of  cleanliness 

towels,  do  not  come  with  the  mere  desire  for 
them. 

You  never  think  of  that  when  you  see  an 
unclean  person,  do  you,  dear? 

You  never  think  of  the  price  of  cleanliness. 

Because  it  is  easy  for  you  to  be  clean  you 
have  been  assuming  that  it  is  just  as  easy  for 
everyone  to  be  clean. 

You  have  heard  your  mother  say  :  "  Well, 
I  sympathize  with  the  poor  as  much  as  any- 
body, but  there  is  no  excuse  for  a  man  or 
woman  not  being  clean."  You  see  mothers 
can  be  ignorant  even  when  they  are  good  to 
us  and  tender. 

Linen  costs  money,  too. 

If  the  laundry  girl  has  any  to  change  after 
buying  food  she  feels  lucky. 

There  are  lots  who  don't. 

Your  mother  does  not  tell  you  these  things, 
even  when  she  knows  them. 

She  says  you  have  only  one  girlhood  ;  and 
that  you  will  collide  with  the  grave  things  of 
life  soon  enough. 

She  thinks  that  ignorance  is  innocence. 

But  we  have  been  to  the  laundry  today, — 
you  and  I. 

We  know  better  now,  don't  we  ? 

11 


Forgings  of  the  new 

We  know  that  ignorance  which  dulls  us 
into  content,  and  makes  the  world  seem 
beautiful,  while  all  the  time  we  are  blindly 
stamping  out  the  lives  of  other  human  be- 
ings, cannot  be  innocence  :  it  can  only  be  in- 
famy. 

When  we  looked  into  that  laundry  window 
today,  we  realized  that  the  price  we  are  pay- 
ing for  cleanliness  of  body  is  stultification  of 
soul. 

To  keep  clean  at  the  cost  of  others'  toil  is 
to  bathe  the  soul  in  slime. 

Some  day,  dear,  you  will  look  into  your 
mother's  eyes,  and  she  will  quail  before  you ; 
for  she  will  see  that  in  her  foolish  hope  to 
save  you  pain  she  has  helped  to  stain  your 
soul. 

She  will  see  that  a  pure  girlhood  is  not 
possible  for  you  until  it  is  possible  for  every 
mother's  child.  Ignorance  does  not  save. 

Did  I  not  see  the  tears  in  your  eyes  as  we 
turned  from  the  window  of  that  damp  base- 
ment? 

Your  sweet  face  paled.     It  was  like  a  lily. 

It  was  as  if  the  lily  should  realize  for  an 
instant  that  the  sources  of  its  beautiful  life 
are  deep  down  in  the  sub-aqueous  soil  of  the 
12 


The  price  of  cleanliness 

pond  ;  down  in  the  ooze  and  slime: — and  feel 
sorry. 

You  were  the  lily  blossom. 

Those  girls  were  the  ooze  and  slime. 

It  is  not  with  human  life  as  it  is  with  the 
lily. 

Human  life  might  all  be  blossom. 

But  first  we  must  want  it  to  be  all  blossom. 
Desire  precedes  functioning  the  scientists 
tell  us. 

1  want  to  see  the  light  of  high  desire  in 
your  eyes,  dear.  It  makes  a  woman  so  beau- 
tiful. 

Did  you  ever  see  the  pictured  eyes  of  Joan 
of  Arc  ? 

That  is  the  light  I  mean. 

It  makes  an  angel  of  a  woman. 

Little,  graceful  pettinesses;  little  conven- 
tional accomplishments ;  plaything  prettiness : 
all  seem  very  insignificant  in  the  light  of  that 
high  glance. 

And  cleanliness  of  body,  alone,  does  not 
bring  that,  dear. 

Cleanliness  of  soul  brings  that.  The  price 
of  that  cleanliness  is  truth. 

Yes  :  I  see  you  understand. 

You  see  that  life  is  one. 

13 


Forgings  of  the  new 

You  must  help  to  free  those  girls  in  the 
laundry. 

You  must  strive  to  get  off  their  weary 
backs  ;  and  to  teach  and  compel  other  people 
to  get  off  their  backs,  and  the  backs  of  all 
who  toil. 

We  must  find  how  to  do  our  share  now, 
must  we  not  ? 

You  cannot  find  comfort  in  the  old  way, 
now. 

You  are  sad  ;  but  yet  you  are  happy. 

That  is  the  power  of  truth — it  expands  the 
soul. 

And  that  light  is  coming  in  your  face ;  you 
are  rising  to  consciousness — race-conscious- 
ness,— life-consciousness ;  the  birth  of  pur- 
pose. 

Your  mother  would  smile  if  I  were  to  tell 
her  that  I  love  you  more  than  she  does ; 
would  she  not  ? 

Yet  I  believe  I  do. 

She  would  say  that  if  I  loved  you,  I  would 
take  you  to  pleasant  places. 

And  I  took  you  to  a  laundry. 

But  your  mother  does  not  understand,  dear. 

She  is  the  mother  of  your  body. 

I  am  the  mother  of  your  soul. 

14 


CONSIDER  THE  LILIES 

A  walk  in  the  spring  woods  revives  the 
wearied  spirit.  Nature  blossoms  in  infinite 
variety.  The  sun,  the  great  Compeller,  as  he 
warms  the  earth,  brings  from  her  ample  bosom 
a  varied  brood. 

The  majestic  march  of  the  seasons  showers 
new  forms,  new  births,  new  radiance  before 
the  wondering  eyes  of  him  who  has  eyes  to 
see,  and  warms  the  awakened  soul  into  vague, 
haunting  dreams  of  life's  great  possibilities. 

If  humanity,  too,  could  but  blossom  into 
as  varied  individuality ;  how  the  world  would 
fill  with  interest. 

There  is  but  scanty  inspiration  in  a  hundred 
thousand  men  in  derby  hats. 

Every  plant  in  nature  finds  a  dress  which 
expresses  its  individuality,  and  it  does  not 
change  it  at  a  Paris  cablegram.  It  has  its 
this  year's  gown  made  like  its  last  year's 
gown,  and  one  learns  to  look  for  it  and  to 
love  it,  because  it  fits  it  so. 

Where  Individuality  is  o'ercrowed  by  Style 
the  field  is  left  to  dull  Monotony. 

Who  decrees  that  we  shall  all  follow  a  bell- 
wether in  our  dressing  ? 

15 


Forgings  of  the  new 

Fashion. 

And  who  is  the  parent  of  this  arbitrary 
leveler  ? 

Commercialism  !  The  styles  must  change 
to  keep  trade  going.  By  producing  things  for 
profit  and  not  for  use  we  pay  the  price  in  medi- 
ocrity. The  tall  man  must  dress  like  the  short 
man  and  the  thin  woman  like  the  fat  woman. 

Under  the  spur  of  the  thing  called  Style 
the  obligation  is,  not  to  be  like  ourselves,  but 
like  somebody  else,  and  this  is  the  death- 
knell  of  the  individual. 

It  is  as  if  the  violet,  and  the  primrose,  and 
the  honeysuckle  should  follow  the  fashion  in 
cabbages, — intensely  flattering  to  the  cabbage, 
but  the  diversity  which  makes  the  world  in- 
teresting would  go  glimmering. 

If  the  outside  world  were  but  a  cabbage- 
patch  we'd  stay  in  town  for  our  vacations. 

Change,  variety,  is  not  the  spice  of  life,  it 
is  life  itself. 

Where  you  find  a  man  or  woman  who 
wears  clothes  for  comfort,  you  are  likely  to 
discover  at  the  same  time  an  individual. 

Those  who  aspire  to  dress  alike  will  aspire 
to  think  alike,  and  conventionality  in  thought 
is  always  the  mark  of  arrested  development. 

16 


Consider  the  lilies 

A  wise  look  often  hides  an  empty  brain 
and  those  who  love  accuracy  of  expression 
will  not  fall  into  the  error  of  calling  every 
human  being  who  wears  pants  a  man. 

A  college  education  can  never  make  a  dull 
man  think,  and  a  tailor  can  only  cover  up 
physical  deformity  in  some  by  concealing 
the  beautiful  outlines  of  others. 

In  rhinoceros -skin  trousers  bow-legged 
men  shine ;  but  the  emancipated  are  in  no 
wise  deceived. 

In  woman,  every  season  brings  some  new 
atrocity  ;  padded  hips,  "  military  fronts/'  or 
other  profit  -  mongering  device  to  disturb 
purse  and  comfort;  only  one  principle,  ob- 
viously, imperative;  the  desecration  of  the 
human  form. 

Until  the  day  of  the  Individual  it  is  well 
that  changes  come  and  go  with  but  short  in- 
termissions. 

If  any  of  the  deforming  aberrations  lasted 
long  enough  for  hereditary  bias  to  get  in  its 
work  the  human  form  might  vanish  into  the 
camel-shape,  or  the  giraffe,  or  the  kangaroo. 

The  dressing  of  human  beings  is  an  affront 
to  the  universe  whose  law  is  variety.  A  man 
in  pants  is  an  absurdity. 

17 


Forgings  of  the  new 

Golf  stockings  and  knickerbockers  must 
force  their  way  among  men  who  get  into  the 
woods  and  meadows  ;  they  cannot  stand  the 
silent  derision  of  Nature. 

A  pair  of  pants  in  the  presence  of  a  tree 
is  an  abomination,  and  convicts  us  of  silli- 
ness. 

The  Greeks  knew  how  to  dress  and  there 
are  yet  races  and  tribes  on  the  earth  whose 
costume  admits  of  individual  expression  ;  but 
in  those  parts  of  civilization  where  Commer- 
cialism is  a  god,  Individuality  is  dead  and 
buried,  awaiting  the  social  touch  that  shall 
resurrect  it. 

Individuality  can  flourish  only  in  a  free 
common  life.  The  economic  basis  of  life 
must  be  secure ;  wrinkles  of  haunting  care 
must  be  smoothed  off  the  brow  of  humanity 
before  those  native  graces  which  slumber  in 
every  soul  may  shine  through  the  physical 
instrument  and  shed  their  varied  beauty  on 
mankind. 

A  flower  never  can  blossom  before  its  roots 
are  secure.  Its  source  of  life  must  be  un- 
questionable before  it  can  give  its  fragrance 
to  the  world. 

Humanity  is  a  flower. 

18 


Consider  the  lilies 

It  has  been  striving  for  centuries  to  get  its 
roots  in  the  soil. 

Its  bread  has  never  been  secure. 

The  individual  is  the  human  blossom. 

How  we  run  about  after  the  man  who  pos- 
sesses Individuality  !  He  always  has  a  crowd 
of  lovers  about  him  ;  he  can  scarcely  get 
time  for  his  own  dreaming, — time  to  watch  a 
blade  of  grass  grow. 

The  human  being  who  is  an  individual  is 
the  most  glorious  offering  of  the  universe. 

Jesus,  Socrates,  Mazzini,  Marx,  George, 
do  not  come  by  the  dozen.  All  nipped  by 
the  cruel  frost  before  their  time  they  yet  have 
shed  an  imperishable  glory  on  the  world. 

We  can  produce  radiant  souls  as  easily  as 
we  produce  violets. 

All  we  have  to  do  is  to  use  the  same 
intelligence  in  preparing  the  soil  for  the 
man  that  we  do  in  preparing  the  soil  for  the 
violet. 

The  soul,  Individuality,  will  flower  in  as 
infinite  variety  as  Nature  herself  if  we  look 
after  its  roots. 

A  world  in  which  every  man  is  an  indi- 
vidual, shedding  the  light  of  his  singular 
presence  upon  the  common  life,  would  be 

19 


Forgings  of  the  new 

paradise  enough.  No  man  would  wish  to 
leave  so  beautiful  a  world. 

We  can  have  such  a  world  if  we  want  it. 

But  more  than  a  few  of  us  must  want  it. 

Individuality  achieved  in  a  world  of  me- 
diocrity is  but  to  freeze  in  loneliness  upon  the 
heights.  This  is  why  the  lives  of  the  great 
conquerors  have  ended  in  disappointment. 

Nothing  is  worth  while  but  human  life. 

If  we  strive  against  other  lives  to  build  our 
own  life,  we  fail  at  the  end. 

Our  success  marks  the  measure  of  our 
failure.  As  Triumph  comes  in  Love  goes  out. 

Love  is  the  law. 

The  flowers  strike  their  roots  into  the 
common  earth ;  the  rain  falls  on  them  all ; 
they  nod  to  the  cleansing  wind ;  the  sun 
kisses  one  and  the  other ;  there  is  no  favor- 
itism in  nature. 

To  make  the  human  garden  as  beautiful  as 
the  garden  of  nature  we  have  only  to  learn 
the  lesson  of  the  sun  and  rain  ;  we  have  only 
to  make  the  collective  purpose  and  effort  of 
society  the  fitting  of  every  human  plant  to 
nobly  fulfill  its  individual  destiny. 

We  cannot  enjoy  each  other  if  we  are  all 
crushed  into  the  same  mold.  By  collectively 
20 


Consider  the  lilies 

making  every  man's  bread  secure,  we  set 
men  free  to  nobly  serve.  No  lazy  man 
would  then  be  known ;  for  each  could  find 
the  work  he  loved  to  do ;  work  would  be  a 
joy  and  a  song;  work  would  express  coopera- 
tion with  Creative  Nature. 

When  the  sources  of  human  life  are  owned 
in  common ;  when  out  of  the  bounteous 
granaries  of  the  world  the  humblest  child 
shall  draw  his  sustenance ;  when  want  and 
hunger  and  profits  and  exploitation  have  be- 
come but  dreams  of  distorted  fancy ;  when 
competition  shall  have  given  place  to  emula- 
tion ;  when  all  the  world  holds  no  thought  so 
sacred  as  that  of  human  life ;  when  I  would 
have  you  be  what  you  yourself  would  be  and 
aid  you  to  become  it ;  then  mediocrity  will 
forever  vanish  from  the  haunts  of  men,  the 
human  violet  will  meet  the  human  primrose 
upon  Life's  highway,  and  from  their  kiss  of 
joy  a  pearl  will  spring  so  rich,  so  pure,  so 
rainbow-hued  that  in  it  men  shall  look  with 
seeing  eyes  and  read  the  riddle  of  the  Uni- 
verse. 


21 


AS  THE  WHEELS  TURN 

"  Human  nature  cannot  be  trusted." 

On  the  limited  train  of  the  Lake  Shore 
railroad  running  between  Chicago  and  New 
York,  these  words  were  uttered  by  one  sleek, 
prosperous-looking  person  to  another  sleek, 
prosperous-looking  person  sitting  in  the  seat 
beside  him.  Only  this  one  sentence  of  their 
conversation  was  distinguishable  above  the 
roar  of  the  train  and  the  night  rain  beating 
against  the  sleeper  windows. 

The  Lake  Shore  Limited  was  running  sixty 
miles  an  hour. 

All  day  long  human  nature  had  patrolled 
the  dreary  length  of  track  searching  with  faith- 
ful eyes  for  a  loose  spike,  a  started  nut,  or  a 
springing  coupling-plate  that  might  prove  a 
menace  to  the  safety  of  the  two  sleek  persons. 
All  day  long  human  nature  had  been  cleaning 
switch  and  signal  lamps,  tramping  in  the 
evening  storm  to  place  them  where  the  sig- 
nals would  be  true,  and  the  switch-lights  ac- 
curate and  reliable.  All  day  long  human 
nature  had  bent  over  the  click  of  the  tele- 
graph transmitters  and  receivers,  that  the 
freight  trains  and  the  local  trains  might  be 
22 


As  the  wheels  turn 

well  out  of  the  way  of  the  train  which  was  to 
bear  the  two  sleek  persons.  Every  car-wheel, 
every  axle,  every  bolt,  pin,  coupler,  buffer, 
angle-iron,  driving-rod,  cylinder,  brake,  every 
detail  of  this  wonderfully  equipped  rolling 
palace,  from  the  locomotive  headlight  to  the 
rear  platform  lantern,  was  sound,  stable  and 
in  its  place  because  human  nature  had  in- 
spected it  and  pronounced  it  safe  to  carry 
and  adequate  to  serve.  And  at  the  very 
moment  of  its  revilement,  human  nature,  with 
flannel  streaked  with  grime,  hand  upon  throt- 
tle, with  cap  pulled  tight  across  forehead,  was 
leaning  far  out  of  the  rocking,  swaying  cab, 
peering  into  the  blackness  and  the  pelting  rain, 
along  the  path  of  the  monster  locomotive, 
tirelessly  alert,  that  no  harm  might  come. 

In  what  tJien,  or  in  whom  were  the  two  sleek 
persons  trusting  ? 

A  flaw  in  the  steel  of  the  great  locomotive 
drive  wheels,  inspected  by  human  nature 
months  before  ;  a  single  loose  rail  in  all  those 
miles  of  track ;  a  misplaced  signal  lantern  or 
an  open  switch  might  have  hurled  the  two 
sleek  persons  into  eternity. 

How  was  it  possible  for  the  two  sleek  per- 
sons to  voice  this  calumny  regarding  human 


Forgings  of  the  new 

nature  when  every  reposeful,  confident  breath 
they  drew  on  this  lightning -running  train 
should  have  proved  to  them  the  falsity  of 
their  assertions  and  overwhelmed  them  with 
honest  shame  ? 

It  is  because,  in  ceasing  to  be  truly  human 
themselves,  they  had  lost  the  faculty  of  recog- 
nizing true  humanity. 

They  believed  they  had  been  dealing  with 
human  nature  in  the  gambling  pit  of  the 
stock  exchange ;  in  the  wolfish  and  pitiless 
economic  warfare  called  business ;  in  those 
walks  of  life  where  human  nature  is  deformed 
and  twisted  by  a  false  environment  of  wrong 
living,  until  it  no  longer  is  human  nature, 
— until  it  shames  even  brute  nature. 

And  all  the  time,  before  their  very  eyes, 
patient,  faithful,  gentle  human  nature  is  grow- 
ing bread  for  the  two  sleek  persons  ;  making 
their  clothes ;  building  their  houses  ;  serving, 
serving,  serving ;  day  and  night ;  week  and 
week;  year  and  year;  while  the  two  sleek 
persons  and  all  their  class  are  living  as  drones 
and  parasites  and  blood-suckers ;  too  atro- 
phied and  dulled  by  their  false  relations  to 
humanity  to  see  or  recognize  what  ghastly 
spectacles  they  are. 

24 


As  the  wheels  turn 

Whenever  a  life  ceases  to  be  a  life  of  service, 
it  ceases  to  be  a  human  life.  When  we  grow 
away  from  the  downmost  being  and  lose  sight 
of  the  godhood  in  him,  we  lose  sight  of  the 
indwelling  Force  called  God.  For  in  the 
spiritual  possibilities  of  true  human  nature 
resides  all  there  is  of  God. 


THE  DRAGON'S  TEETH 

"  For  the  dragon's  teeth  are  the  little  letters  of  the 
alphabet,  sown  by  Cadmus  to  breed  dissension  upon 
earth." 

There  are  few  things  so  beautiful  as  a 
printed  page.  See  the  little  hieroglyphs — 
dragon's  teeth — sowed  in  rows  with  such 
nice  precision.  Can  a  printer  be  criticised, 
can  a  maker  of  books  be  criticised,  for  loving 
his  work  ? 

And  what  a  growth  may  spring  from  a 
page's  sowing, — nay,  a  word's.  The  hiero- 
glyphs may  be  so  set  in  a  single  word  that 
they  will  tear  your  heart  out. 

A  man  may  read  a  word  and  sink  to  the 
earth  in  a  swoon ;  he  may  read  another  and 
leap  with  shouts  of  victory. 

Sharp  teeth  indeed  are  these  little  char- 
acters of  Cadmus';  sharp  to  gnaw  at  our 
vitals. 

A  single  line  of  type  may  change  the  cur- 
rent of  a  life-stream, — a  tiny  dyke  to  deflect 
the  pent-up  waters. 

There  once  was  a  man  who  went  about 
with  dull  eyes,  hating  the  world  as  a  place  of 
infamy.  He  saw  gaunt  women  working  late 


The  dragon's  teeth 

into  the  night,  blear-eyed  and  worn  with 
sleepless,  hopeless  toil.  He  looked  into  the 
factories  ;  into  the  rag-rooms  of  paper  mills, 
and  there  he  saw  little  children  working  be- 
side grandmothers  ;  little  children  who  ought 
to  be  playing  in  the  sunshine ;  grandmothers 
who  by  a  life  of  toil  had  earned  a  quiet  place 
in  the  chimney  corner.  His  soul  rebelled  at 
what  he  saw,  for  on  the  street  in  which  he 
lived  was  a  family  which  sent  its  pug  dogs 
out  for  an  airing  in  a  victoria  phaeton  drawn 
by  horses  in  silver-mounted  harness.  There 
were  two  men  up  behind  in  brass  buttons. 
They  were  the  dogs'  lackeys. 

The  man  was  so  sorry  the  good,  common 
things  of  life — food  and  clothing  and  shelter 
— were  so  scarce  that  little  children  and  grand- 
mothers had  to  toil  for  them,  and  strong  men 
had  to  degrade  themselves  to  the  level  of 
dog-lackeys.  But  there  seemed  no  help  for 
it.  If  there  wasn't  enough  there  wasn't. 

This  man  had  a  friend  who  was  unworried, 
who  went  about  smiling  and  happy,  unmoved 
by  the  things  he  saw.  When  he  spoke  to 
this  friend  the  friend  replied  that  he  needed 
the  consolation  of  religion.  He  would  then 
see  that  everything  was  all  right.  Providence 

27 


Forgings  of  the  new 

moved  in  too  mysterious  ways  for  men  to 
understand.  His  friend  told  him  to  go  and 
see  the  minister. 

He  had  never  gone  to  church  much,  but 
he  went  to  see  the  preacher,  because  his  heart 
was  heavy  and  he  wanted  to  see  things  hap- 
pily as  his  friend  did. 

The  preacher  was  a  good  man,  kindly  and 
honest,  helping  whom  he  could,  following 
the  light  he  had. 

When  he  told  the  preacher  about  the  little 
children,  and  the  grandmothers,  and  the  gaunt, 
blear-eyed  women,  the  preacher  wept  honest 
tears.  He  was  truly  sorry.  The  man  could 
see  that  the  preacher  was  sincere. 

The  preacher  said  that  we  were  here  to  re- 
lieve such  suffering  all  we  could  ;  it  was  all  in 
the  inscrutable  Divine  plan ;  God  had  given  us 
the  poor ;  why,  we  know  not ;  we  must  make 
their  lives  as  bearable  as  possible  by  charitable 
works  and  acts  of  kindly  service.  We  must 
trust  God  and  have  faith  ;  faith  in  His  infinite 
goodness  ;  faith  that  all  would  come  right,  for 
He  is  all-powerful  and  beneficent. 

Then  the  man  saw  why  his  friend  could 
be  so  happy ;  it  was  because  he  blamed  it  all 
on  God.  God  was  all-powerful,  God  was 

28 


The  dragon's  teeth 

responsible  ;  for  him  to  interfere  or  to  worry 
was  to  doubt  God. 

The  man  thought  of  the  grandmothers  and 
the  little  children  and  the  gaunt,  blear-eyed 
women,  and  the  pug  dogs  and  the  lackeys, 
and  he  felt  that  he  would  like  to  catch  the 
Responsible  One  and  kick  him  good.  He 
could  have  made  a  better  world  himself;  any 
just  man  could.  It  seemed  to  him  that  his 
friend  and  the  preacher  were  bowing  to  a 
being  who  was  inferior  to  a  common  gentle- 
man. Their  god  was  not  as  good  as  they 
were  if  he  was  all-powerful  as  they  said  and 
ordained  the  things  he  did. 

The  preacher  had  not  given  the  man  much 
comfort,  so  he  went  among  the  philosophers, 
and  got  none  from  them  either,  except  one 
conclusion, — that  of  Professor  Huxley.  The 
sum  of  Professor  Huxley's  great  researches 
was  the  declaration  that  if  human  society  had 
reached  its  ultimate  in  the  class  system  of  the 
very  rich  and  the  very  poor  then  the  best 
thing  which  could  happen  to  the  world  would 
be  for  a  comet  to  come  along  and  bump  it 
into  the  demnition  bow-wows. 

This  is  not  a  very  happy  philosophy.  It 
is  a  better  philosophy  to  die  in  than  to  live 

29 


Forgings  of  the  new 

in.  Huxley  died  in  it ;  but  the  man  we  are 
talking  about  after  reaching  the  same  conclu- 
sion had  to  go  on  living.  That  was  harder. 

One  day  he  picked  up  a  discarded  news- 
paper in  a  railroad  train  and  read  a  long  col- 
umn of  short  paragraphs. 

This  was  one  of  them  :  "  Few  people  real- 
ize the  great  resources  of  the  state  of  Texas. 
Enough  grain  could  be  grown  in  Texas  by 
ordinary  cultivation  to  feed  the  present  popu- 
lation of  the  world." 

He  read  the  paragraph  again.  Then  he 
read  it  again.  Then  he  read  it  once  more. 
Then  his  eyes  wandered  on  to  the  fleeting 
landscape  as  the  train  sped  on,  and  his  im- 
agination conjured  up  the  thousands  and 
thousands  of  wretched  homes  in  America  in 
which,  every  night,  little  children  went  crying 
supperless  to  bed ;  little  children  went  crying 
supperless  to  bed  in  a  country  of  which  a  single 
state  could  feed  the  world! 

He  felt  a  fierce  contraction  of  the  heart. 

The  dragon's  teeth  had  bitten  him  and  he 
was  thenceforth  fated  to  sow  dissension  upon 
the  earth. 

Cadmus,  back  in  the  twilight  of  history, 
had  with  patient  fingers  framed  the  little 

30 


The  dragon's  teeth 

hieroglyphs  which  this  day  were  to  picture 
forth  to  one  man  a  revelation.  Cadmus  had 
sown  the  dragon's  teeth  which,  replanted  in- 
nocently by  some  printer  in  praise  of  Texas, 
had  reached  out  subtly  from  a  printed  page 
and  fastened  upon  a  good  man's  heart. 

Oh,  subtle  little  letters  !  Between  thy  very 
lines  the  quickened  soul  may  glean  oftimes  a 
meaning. 

A  great  manful  wratn  rose  in  this  man's 
heart ;  wrath  at  his  training ;  at  that  base, 
lying  education  which  turns  with  folded  hands 
to  a  god ;  laying  upon  him  the  blame  for  hu- 
man stupidity. 

Religion  ?  Nay,  devil  worship  !  The  good 
preacher  was  bowing  in  his  ignorance  to  a 
devil,  not  a  god.  Did  his  god  make  the 
world  ?  Then  he  made  the  state  of  Texas 
and  its  fertility.  What  would  the  generous 
giver  of  such  a  state, — nay,  of  forty  states, — 
think  of  men  who  would  allow  little  children 
to  starve  in  these  states  and  then  blame  the 
giver  for  their  starvation  ? 

In  his  ignorance  the  preacner  was  blas- 
pheming. Good,  well-meaning  man  that  he 
was,  yet,  in  his  ignorance  he  insulted  grossly 
the  being  he  professed  to  worship. 

31 


Forgings  of  the  new 

These  are  the  thoughts  which  came  to  the 
man  after  the  dragon's  teeth  had  bitten  him. 

And  with  these  thoughts  came  also  a  great 
joy ;  the  realization  that  now  he  had  a  work 
to  do.  The  universe  after  all  was  sincere. 
The  faith  that  was  dead  revived.  He  would 
take  men  by  the  shoulders  and  shake  them 
into  life ;  he  would  sow  dragon's  teeth,  he 
himself  would  carry  on  the  work  which  Cad- 
mus had  begun ! 

He  would  sow  the  teeth  of  the  dragon  on 
highway  and  byway  until  they  should  rend 
the  heart  of  the  stupid  world,  until  crime,  pov- 
erty, wretchedness  and  devil-worship  should 
vanish  from  an  earth  of  plenty. 

And  so  now  he  goes  his  way  with  joy  in 
his  heart  at  last.  Not  the  irresponsible,  fatu- 
ous, shallow  joy  of  his  friend  ;  but  the  deep 
holy  joy  of  a  purposeful  man  whose  soul  is 
in  tune  with  that  Infinite  whose  love  for  men 
is  so  great  that  it  is  unmoved  to  wrath  even 
by  their  malignings. 

And  wherever  the  art  of  printing  has  modi- 
fied the  ignorance  of  the  savage  the  dragon's 
teeth  are  sprouting.  Wherever  there  is  a 
man  who  reads  with  open  mind,  there  is  there 
bred  dissension.  Wherever  an  earnest  man 
32 


The  dragon's  teeth 

sits  with  a  pen,  wherever  a  race-lover  bends 
at  the  printer's  case  for  the  Cause's  sake, 
there  the  dragon's  teeth  are  planting. 

You,  who  are  reading  this  now  :  there  is  here 
some  word  or  some  sentence  which  you  will  never 
forget.  For  the  little  letters  of  Cadmus  upon 
this  page  are  breeding  dissension,  and  they  will 
go  on  breeding  dissension  until  wrong  and  injus- 
tice shall  be  banished  from  the  earth. 


TOM'S  A'COLD 

With  the  advent  of  the  months  ushering  in 
the  winter  the  owners  of  anthracite  coal  raise 
the  price  from  twenty-five  to  fifty  cents  a  ton 
every  thirty  days. 

The  addition  of  every  twenty-five  cents 
means  an  increased  profit  of  one  million  dol- 
lars on  every  four  million  tons  sold.  Four 
million  tons  are  burned  in  one  week  of  severe 
weather. 

In  the  United  States  are  nearly  80,000,000 
people.  Not  all  of  them  use  coal,  but  most 
of  them  do. 

Some  of  them  burn  the  soap-boxes  which 
they  have  been  using  for  furniture  before  the 
winter  is  over.  Many  of  them  do  without 
fire  altogether,  and  here  and  there  a  man  or 
woman,  or  a  family,  freezes  to  death  after  a 
few  weeks  of  underfeeding. 

Food,  making  blood,  heats  the  body  from 
the  inside.  When  the  inside  heater  and  the 
outside  heater  both  get  low  and  the  ther- 
mometer is  around  the  zero  point,  then  you 
die.  Nature  has  her  laws. 

Nature  furnishes  grain, — the  elevators  to- 
day are  full. 


Tom's  a'cold 

Thousands  of  people  today  have  not  had 
enough  to  eat. 

Nature  furnishes  coal.  We  could  not  ex- 
haust the  coal  supply  if  we  would. 

Thousands  of  people  suffer  all  winter  with 
the  cold ;  buying  their  coal  by  the  basket  at 
the  rate  of  $15  a  ton,  or  not  buying  it  at  all. 

Nature  has  her  laws. 

She  makes  men  ;  but  she  cannot  prevent 
their  being  wolves. 

She  makes  men ;  but  she  cannot  prevent 
their  being  fools. 

Until  the  people  use  the  reason  with  which 
they  have  been  gifted,  for  them  there  is  no 
special  providence.  The  wolves  will  get  the 
fleece. 

It  is  not  kings,  nor  landlords,  nor  capital- 
ists who  anywhere  really  enslave  the  people. 

It  is  their  own  ignorance. 

Eighty  million  people  allow  a  few  hundred 
men  to  own  the  coal  by  which  they  may  be 
warmed.  Why  ? 

Did  they  make  the  coal,  these  men  ? 

No ;  they  did  not  make  it ;  they  did  not 
bring  it  into  the  world  with  them  when  they 
came ;  they  will  not  take  it  with  them  when 
they  go. 

35 


Forgings  of  the  new 

Yet  they  own  it.     It  is  a  curious  mystery. 

Do  they  dig  the  coal,  these  men  ? 

No ;  other  men  dig  it ;  poor  men ;  men 
with  grimy  faces  and  aching  backs  ;  for  a  few 
cents  a  ton. 

Do  they  take  it  from  the  mines,  these  men  ? 

No ;  children  do  it ;  little  dwarfed  and 
cheerless  boys,  who  have  never  learned  how 
to  play,  drive  the  stubborn  mules  on  the  sub- 
terranean tramways.  Children  do  it. 

Do  they  transport  the  coal,  these  men  ? 

No ;  other  men  couple  and  uncouple  and 
switch  and  haul  the  cars,  clamber  over  the 
snow-covered  lumps  and  set  the  brakes  of 
freight  trains  with  their  chapped  and  bleed- 
ing hands.  They  get  a  bare  living  for  it. 

What,  then,  do  these  men  do  ? 

Nothing!  Nothing!  Nothing!  Not  a 
single  thing!  They  only  own  the  coal ! 

They  seldom  ever  see  the  coal ;  they  never 
lift  a  shovel  nor  twist  a  brake.  They  spend 
their  time  in  idling  at  the  clubs,  in  driving, 
wrapped  up  in  protecting  furs,  upon  the  speed- 
ways of  the  parks ;  in  spending  in  foreign 
travel,  for  costly  pictures  and  futile  amuse- 
ments, the  money  taken  from  the  pockets  of 
the  poor. 

36 


Tom's  a'cold 

You  wise  persons  who  are  always  saying 
that  every  man  gets  what  he  earns  ! 

What  do  these  men  earn  ? 

You  wise  persons  who  are  always  asking 
what  we  are  going  to  do  with  the  men  who 
won't  work ! 

What  are  you  going  to  do  with  these  men 
who  won't  work  ?  These  men  who  revel  in 
the  luxuries  of  millions  without  doing  a  single 
solitary  act  of  human  service  to  those  who 
support  them  in  their  idleness. 

Is  it  a  crime  to  hate  to  work  ? 

Then  why  do  you  not  put  your  leisure 
class  in  jail  ? 

If  idleness  itself  is  a  crime,  what  is  the 
crime  of  the  man  who  not  only  does  no  work 
himself,  but  prevents  other  men  from  work- 
ing? 

That  is  what  the  owner  of  a  coal  mine 
does.  The  private  ownership  of  a  coal  mine 
is  simply  the  power  to  prevent  other  people 
from  using  it. 

If  you  were  to  advertise  in  a  Chicago  paper 
today  for  a  thousand  men  wanted  to  dig  coal, 
they  would  be  at  the  railroad  station  tomor- 
row morning ;  there  might  be  two  thousand 
there. 

57 


Forgings  of  the  new 

If  you  were  to  advertise  for  trainmen,  you 
would  be  sure  to  get  replies  from  twice  as 
many  as  you  wanted. 

Here,  then,  are  thousands  of  men  willing 
to  serve  with  their  labor  the  other  thousands 
who  are  freezing  for  the  need  of  it. 

Who  stands  in  the  way  then  of  those  who 
would  work  and  those  who  need  the  coal  ? 

The  men  who  own  the  coal! 

So  long  as  the  people  allow  a  few  men  to 
own  what  belongs  to  all  the  people,  these  few 
men  will  traffic  in  the  people's  necessities. 

The  supply  of  coal  is  carefully  limited. 
Vast  coal  acreages  are  held  out  of  use  ;  locked 
up  from  the  people.  The  price  is  thus  kept 
up  to  enrich  the  idle  owners.  They  profit 
by  all  the  improvements  in  production.  The 
people  don't. 

It  is  easy  to  be  a  millionaire  when  the  peo- 
ple acknowledge  your  ownership  of  things 
upon  which  their  lives  depend ;  things  which 
you  do  not  have  to  produce  but  which  you 
can  charge  for  the  use  of. 

When  you  want  a  million  dollars  for  a 
winter  home  in  Florida  you  raise  coal  25  cents. 
That  is,  you  reach  into  the  pockets  of  several 
.million  people  and  take  a  quarter  out  of  each 
38 


Tom's  a'cold 

of  them  ;  25  cents  they  had  been  counting  on 
spending  for  something  else.  You  change 
their  minds  for  them.  The  cold  must  be 
kept  out.  Coal  will  do  it. 

The  Fall  increase  of  50  cents  a  ton  means 
two  million  dollars  every  four  million  tons. 

The  January  increase  of  25  cents  a  ton, 
added  to  the  Fall  increase  of  50  cents,  means 
three  million  dollars  every  four  million  tons. 

The  coal  owners  are  reaping  millions  be- 
fore these  arbitrary  raises  begin.  The  coal 
costs  them  no  more  to  produce  in  winter 
than  in  summer ;  but  the  people  need  it  worse 
in  winter. 

It  is  very  easy. 

These  millions  of  dollars  will  buy  food  and 
clothing  and  shelter  that  human  toil  is  pro- 
ducing. 

The  people  give  up  the  millions  in  order 
to  keep  warm,  and  then  give  up  the  things 
their  labor  produces  in  order  to  get  the  mil- 
lions back  again. 

Here  is  matter  for  the  Devil's  laughter. 

There  are  80,000,000  of  the  people  and 
there  are  only  a  few  hundred  of  the  coal 
mine  owners. 

There  is  coal  enough  for  all. 

39 


Forgings  of  the  new 

Ignorance  alone  enslaves. 

The  middle  class, — that  fatuous,  self-satis- 
fied number  of  men  who  are  getting  a  few 
paltry  thousands  a  year, — think  it  is  a  huge 
joke.  You  hear  them  talking  about  it  to 
one  another  on  the  street  cars  or  on  the  sub- 
urban trains. 

One  will  say :  "  This  is  great  weather  for 
the  Coal  Barons,  eh  ?  " 

One  will  reply :  "  Yes,  this  is  the  weather 
that  makes  us  shovel  the  dollars  into  the 
furnace." 

And  then  they  laugh ;  and  all  the  men  on 
adjacent  seats  who  overhear,  they  laugh  too. 

It  is  the  sport  of  fools. 

In  the  river  wards  of  Chicago  are  ten 
thousand  families  who  never  know  what  it  is 
to  be  warm  in  winter.  Flat-breasted  mothers 
lay  their  little  babes  against  their  bare  skin 
and  shiveringly  hold  them  there  all  night, 
encircled  in  their  arms  to  keep  the  babes 
from  freezing.  Little  children  lie  upon  the 
floors  beside  the  wretched  stove  in  their  day 
clothing,  wrapped  in  a  bit  of  sacking.  Their 
day  clothing  is  their  night  clothing.  Every 
night  they  cry  themselves  to  sleep,  it  is  so 
cold. 

40 


Tom's  a'cold 

Alas,  how  pitiful  it  is.  There  is  so  much 
coal ;  and  there  is  so  much  grain. 

Sometimes  the  good  wives  of  the  coal 
owners  come  in  their  furs  to  see  the  poor 
people.  They  feel  very  sorry  for  them. 

They  generally  ask  if  the  habits  of  the 
father  are  temperate  and  if  the  children  go 
to  Sunday-school.  Then,  if  they  think  the 
poor  people  really  need  it,  they  send  around 
half  a  ton  of  coal. 

Then  they  feel  very  happy  as  we  always 
do  when  we  think  we  have  done  a  good 
thing. 

The  next  day  they  kneel  in  a  cushioned 
pew  in  a  nice  warm  church  and  say  :  "  Lord, 
have  mercy  upon  us  miserable  offenders ! " 
They  say  the  same  thing  to  God  every  Sun- 
day. Perhaps  God  does  not  hear  them.  He 
may  be  listening  to  the  cry  of  the  cold  little 
children. 

The  men  who  own  the  coal  are  not  un- 
kindly men.  Why  should  they  think  it  is 
wrong  to  own  the  coal  when  the  people  them- 
selves think  it  is  right?  That's  the  point! 
Stupid,  patient  beasts.  The  people  them- 
selves think  it  is  right.  Most  of  them  will 
vote  and  fight  for  those  who  exploit  them. 

41 


Forgings  of  the  new 

Human  life  is  cheap.  They  have  been  trained 
to  bow  to  property  as  a  god.  Habits  of  mind 
enslave  men  infinitely  more  than  habits  of 
body. 

If  you,  among  well-to-do  people,  dare  to 
point  out  the  fact  that  by  every  principle  of 
justice  the  coal  is  for  the  common  use  of  all, 
you  are  looked  upon  as  a  social  leper.  These 
well-to-do  ones  are  mentally  so  enslaved  by 
the  common  thought  of  the  defensibility  of 
private  exploitation  that  laws  are  now  being 
talked  of  to  suppress  criticism.  They  are 
now  legislating  to  stop  the  mouth  of  the 
hungry  man  by  banishment  or  legal  murder. 

Ignorance  has  so  atrophied  their  minds  and 
souls  that  their  marks  of  mental  and  moral  deg- 
radation have  become  the  recognized  patents  of 
respectability  ! 

To  think  you  are  living  under  just  institu- 
tions when  every  institution  at  some  point  of 
contact  reeks  with  infamy  ;  to  think  that  laws 
are  fair  when  before  your  very  eyes  men  who 
do  no  work  revel  in  luxury,  and  men  whose 
lives  are  all  work  freeze  and  starve ;  to  be- 
lieve that  a  civilization  is  good  which  dwarfs 
and  blights  the  highest  instincts  of  the  soul 
from  the  hour  of  its  birth ;  in  short,  to  be  in 
42 


Tom's  a'cold 

Hell  and  not  to  know  that  you  are  in  Hell  is 
human  degradation  to  the  depths  of  which 
even  the  imagination  of  a  Dante  could  not 
reach. 

If  the  people  willed  it  so  this  earth  might 
be  a  paradise. 

Coal  might  be  distributed  as  postage  stamps 
are  distributed  ;  not  for  profit  but  for  the  hap- 
piness and  the  comfort  of  us  all. 

Why  not  ? 

Would  the  world  be  worse  to  live  in  be- 
cause no  one  was  cold  ? 

Back  of  the  men  who  own  the  coal,  bul- 
warking them  in  their  wrong,  looms  the  stu- 
pendous stupidity  of  the  people  expressed  in 
the  laws  of  private  property. 

A  few  men  may  enslave  a  million, — helped 
by  the  million's  ignorance. 

Private  ownership  of  the  coal  is  a  mon- 
strous crime.  The  coal  has  been  in  the 
earth  since  the  creation  of  the  world.  No 
man  made  it  and  no  man  owns  it. 

To  hold  it  from  those  who  need  it  is  to 
commit  murder. 

Man's  life  is  but  a  brief  four-score  years, 
shortened  to  three-score,  for  the  most,  by 
worry. 

43 


Forgings  of  the  new 

To  enable  one  man  to  come  upon  the 
earth  and  charge  another  man  for  the  coal  of 
the  earth,  so  that  one  may  loaf  and  one  must 
work  for  two,  society  must  be  organized  on 
a  basis  of  human  slavery. 

In  spite  of  our  blatant  boasting  and  igno- 
rant pretense  of  free  institutions  the  Ameri- 
can civilization  of  today  is  a  slave  civilization. 
The  men  of  this  glorious  republic  are  hard- 
driven  slaves  of  fear.  Look  into  the  faces  in 
the  city  streets  and  see  what  is  written  there ! 

Who  owns  your  bread  his  song  you  sing. 

Who  owns  your  coal  owns  you. 

No  one  made  the  coal. 

The  coal  cannot  be  owned  by  a  few  unless 
the  people  wish  it  to  be  owned  by  a  few. 

The  people  are  millions ;  the  owners  are 
a  handful. 

Ignorance  alone  enslaves  1 


DOES  IT  SEEM  FAIR  TO  YOU? 

The  Stock  yards  at  Chicago  is  not  a  pleas- 
ant place  to  work.  The  odors  are  very  foul 
there  and  the  streets  reek  with  filth.  One 
can  seldom  get  a  breath  of  untainted  air. 
Yet  there  are  in  Chicago  ten  thousand  more 
men  than  are  employed  at  the  packing-houses 
already,  who  would  gladly  work  all  day  with 
that  vile  stench  in  their  nostrils  if  they  could 
get  bread  enough  for  their  children  to  eat, 
and  coal  enough  to  keep  them  warm. 

The  hunger-whip  can  make  men  work  al- 
most anywhere. 

It  is  hard  to  get  employment  at  the  stock 
yards.  There  are  always  so  many  men  wait- 
ing around  for  every  job.  A  man  will  suffer 
almost  any  indignity  from  the  boss  before  he 
will  complain. 

It  is  strange  that  it  is  so  hard  for  a  man 
to  get  work.  There  is  so  much  useful  and 
necessary  work  to  be  done.  Something  seems 
to  stand  in  the  way  of  doing  it.  Nobody  in 
particular  seems  to  blame. 

Perhaps  it  is  the  system. 

The  big  packing  companies  don't  seem  to 
care  much  about  a  man.  Perhaps  they  have 

45 


Forgings  of  the  new 

no  children  of  their  own.  Or  perhaps  they 
have  plenty  of  shoes  and  stockings  and  other 
things  to  keep  out  the  cold. 

If  you  go  to  work  for  them  you  have  to 
put  up  ten  dollars.  The  company  keeps  it 
to  keep  you  straight. 

If  you  have  been  out  of  work  for  a  while 
and  are  in  debt  at  the  grocer's,  and  there  is 
no  bread  or  coal  in  the  house,  you  have  not 
the  ten  dollars  to  put  up. 

Then  you  sign  a  contract  to  let  the  com- 
pany keep  back  some  of  your  wages  every 
week  until  the  ten  dollars  belonging  to  you 
is  in  their  bank. 

You  sign  a  contract  anyhow.  You  cannot 
get  the  job  if  you  don't.  Other  men  are 
glad  to  sign  it. 

When  you  are  behind  in  your  rent  and 
the  landlord  and  the  grocer  are  pressing  you, 
it  is  hard  not  to  get  your  full  pay  ;  but  if  you 
don't  like  the  job  you  can  leave  it. 

And  then  there  is  your  contract. 

If  you  quit  your  job  without  giving  the 
company  two  week's  notice,  the  company 
keeps  your  money. 

Sometimes  your  wife  or  your  little  boy  gets 
so  sick  you  can't  go  to  work.  If  you  did 
46 


Does  it  seem  fair  to  you  ? 

they  might  die  while  you  were  gone.  You 
cannot  give  the  two  weeks'  notice  then. 
Sickness  does  not  tell  you  when  it  is  coming. 

So  you  lose  the  ten  dollars. 

The  company  would  refund  the  money  if 
they  really  knew  how  much  you  needed  it. 
But  working  men  are  so  unreliable.  They 
drink  and  they  lie.  The  company  cannot  go 
about  all  the  time  verifying  their  stories. 

So  you  lose  it. 

You  might  get  a  lawyer  to  see  about  it,  as 
the  company  has  no  right  to  your  money. 
But  lawyers  have  to  be  paid. 

And  there  is  your  contract.  That  settles 
it.  You  cannot  go  back  of  that.  You  signed 
it  of  your  own  free  will.  You  had  to  sign  it 
to  get  the  job.  So  the  law  would  not  help  you. 

You  seldom  know  there  is  a  law  until  you 
get  arrested  for  something.  It  seems  as  if 
the  law  helped  some  people  to  take  advantage 
of  others.  Perhaps  it's  the  system. 

Ten  dollars  is  not  much.  But  the  big 
packers  have  several  plants.  Ten  thousand 
men  at  ten  dollars  each  is  one  hundred 
thousand  dollars.  At  six  per  cent  that  is  six 
thousand  dollars  a  year, — interest  on  your 
money. 

47 


Forcings  of  the  new 

Your  little  girl  may  need  shoes.  It  does 
not  seem  right. 

If  the  men  should  strike,  the  company 
might  make  one  hundred  thousand  dollars, 
— unless  the  men  won.  If  they  lost  the  strike 
they  might  lose  the  money. 

There  are  always  so  many  hungry  scabs  to 
take  your  place.  You  cannot  prevent  them 
from  working.  There  is  no  excuse  for  vio- 
lence in  a  free  country. 

Then  there  is  the  military. 

You  might  complain  often  if  you  could  get 
another  job.  The  managers  of  the  depart- 
ments do  not  like  you  to  complain.  The 
man  who  runs  his  department  for  the  least 
money  gets  the  most  pay. 

If  you  are  two  minutes  late  you  are  docked 
half  an  hour, — an  hour  in  some  places.  That's 
a  good  deal. 

Then  if  the  killing  is  late  you  run  over  the 
closing  hour.  But  you  do  not  get  an  extra 
cent  for  that. 

Ten  or  fifteen  minutes  three  or  four  days 
in  the  week  is  not  much  for  one  man.  But 
for  ten  thousand  it  is  much.  It  makes  a 
good  showing  for  the  boss.  He  gets  that 
labor  free. 

48 


Does  it  seem  fair  to  you  ? 

In  one  of  the  houses  one  winter  some  of 
the  men  spoke  about  it  to  one  another.  It 
was  happening  so  regularly.  One  of  them 
agreed  to  keep  tab  on  the  overtime.  The 
boss  saw  him  marking  in  a  little  book.  The 
next  day  the  office  sent  for  him  and  told  him 
they  did  not  need  him  any  longer.  He  was 
a  good  man  and  had  worked  faithfully ;  but 
the  boss  wanted  to  make  a  good  showing. 
He  did  not  want  any  dissatisfaction  among 
the  men. 

The  office  did  not  give  the  two  weeks' 
notice. 

It  was  not  in  the  contract. 

It  is  better  not  to  find  fault  with  anything 
if  you  expect  to  stay. 

One  day  a  yard  man  was  sent  out  with  the 
State  inspector.  The  inspector  turned  down 
forty  cattle.  He  said  they  had  a  disease 
called  lumpy  jaw.  Such  beef  is  not  good  to 
eat. 

In  the  afternoon  the  yard  man  saw  the 
forty  cattle  with  a  lot  of  others  in  the  killing 
pen.  The  inspector  had  gone  on  to  one  of 
the  other  packing-houses. 

The  yard  man  knew  that  people  have  died 
of  eating  diseased  meat,  so  he  slipped  over 

49 


Forgings  of  the  new 

to  where  the  inspector  was  and  told  him  the 
lumpy-jawed  cattle  had  got  into  the  killing 
pen  by  mistake.  So  the  inspector  went  and 
ordered  them  out  again  ; — which  prevented 
their  being  killed  until  the  following  day. 

The  yard  man  had  gone  then.  They  told 
him  at  the  office  he  should  learn  to  keep  his 
mouth  shut.  He  was  not  paid  for  sneaking 
about,  they  said. 

It  is  hard  to  get  another  job  when  they  let 
you  go  that  way.  You  always  have  to  tell 
where  you  worked  before.  And  then  they 
tell  you  to  come  around  next  week.  Mean- 
while they  look  you  up.  When  you  come 
around  the  next  week  they  say  they  guess 
they  don't  need  any  more  men  just  now. 

In  one  house  a  man  worked  for  twelve 
years  at  one  job.  He  was  so  good  that  he 
got  more  pay  than  the  others.  The  work 
was  important.  He  had  not  missed  a  day  in 
ten  years.  They  could  not  give  him  a  vaca- 
tion the  boss  said.  There  was  no  one  to 
take  his  place.  But  one  day  his  brother 
came  to  see  him  from  England  and  he  said 
he  wanted  to  lay  off  for  two  weeks. 

The  boss  said  he  could  not  spare  him  ;  but 
as  he  had  worked  there  for  twelve  years  and 
50 


Does  it  seem  fair  to  you  ? 

knew  the  manager  he  went  to  the  office  and 
got  permission.  When  he  came  back  in  two 
weeks  the  boss  said  he  was  sorry,  but  the 
place  was  filled. 

So  he  went  to  look  for  a  job  at  one  of  the 
other  houses.  He  was  too  good  a  man  to 
remain  long  idle. 

But  they  all  turned  him  down  so  persist- 
ently that  he  became  discouraged. 

Finally  one  of  the  clerks  in  a  big  plant, 
who  used  to  work  where  he  did,  took  him 
quietly  aside  and  told  him  his  name  was  on 
the  "  blue  book  "  and  it  was  no  good  trying. 

He  wondered  what  his  family  would  do. 

You  can't  learn  a  new  trade  right  away  after 
you  have  worked  for  twelve  years  at  one  job. 

None  of  the  packing-houses  would  have 
him. 

Finally  he  went  back  to  the  old  house  and 
pleaded  with  tears  in  his  eyes  to  be  taken. 
He  could  not  see  his  family  starve. 

The  hunger-whip  sort  of  cowes  men. 

So  they  said  he  might  go  to  work,  but  they 
could  not  pay  him  so  much  as  before. 

They  wanted  him  back  all  the  time,  but 
they  wanted  to  teach  him  a  lesson.  They 
fixed  him  on  the  blue  book  so  they  could  be 

51 


Forgings  of  the  new 

sure  he  would  come  back  to  them.     It  does 
not  pay  to  be  too  independent. 

Jobs  are  not  so  plenty  as  all  that. 

Then,  too,  the  companies  give  everyone  a 
chance  to  get  on.  They  encourage  you  to 
buy  stock. 

Employees  who  own  stock  take  a  greater 
interest  in  the  plant.  They  look  out  for 
waste  and  that  sort  of  thing.  The  more 
stock  you  own  the  faster  you  get  on.  They 
don't  make  you  buy  stock  but  they  show 
you  it's  to  your  advantage.  Not  many  of 
the  workmen  own  any.  It  takes  all  their 
wages  to  buy  groceries  and  fuel  and  occa- 
sionally a  little  clothing. 

One  man  bought  a  share  and  when  his 
family  got  sick  he  wanted  to  sell  it.  The 
company  sent  him  to  their  broker  in  La  Salle 
street.  He  had  bought  it  of  the  company  at 
par,  but  he  sold  it  to  their  broker  for  what 
he  could  get. 

If  he  had  been  more  industrious  and  saved 
more  of  his  wages  he  would  not  have  had  to 
sell  it.  The  company  did  not  make  him  buy 
it.  It  was  not  anybody's  fault. 

Yet  it  seemed  too  bad  somehow. 

Perhaps  it  is  the  system. 
52 


JIMMIE,  THE  WEAVER 

"  The  entire  force  of  weavers  in  the  Fitchburg  worst- 
ed mills  and  the  Beoli  mills  of  the  American  Woolen 
company  struck  today  in  sympathy  with  the  Rhode 
Island  employees  of  the  combine  in  the  struggle 
against  the  two-loom  system  in  that  state." 

—Boston  Herald. 

Jimmie,  the  weaver,  isn't  a  weaver ;  he  is 
a  sweeper. 

Jimmie  used  to  be  a  weaver,  but  now  he 
sweeps  out  the  factory  and  does  odd  jobs 
around ; — jobs  an  old  man  can  do.  That's 
what  they  call  him  :  "  the  old  man."  He  is 
forty-five  years  old.  Nearly  all  the  men  in 
factory  towns  in  New  England  are  "  old " 
when  they  are  forty-five.  As  soon  as  they 
lose  their  nimbleness  they  are  cashiered ;  or 
the  fining  system  drives  them  out.  Men's 
fingers  are  less  nimble  than  women's  any- 
how ;  particularly  young  girls'. 

As  Jimmie  isn't  under  the  strain  of  watch- 
ing the  looms  for  a  break  he  is  always  ready 
to  talk ;  particularly  if  he  can  get  off  in  a 
corner  with  you,  where  the  superintendent 
doesn't  see  him.  Jimmie  is  faithful  enough 
about  the  jobs  he  does  ;  as  faithful  as  you  can 
expect  an  old  man  of  forty-five  to  be ;  but  he 

53 


Forgings  of  the  new 

has  been  quaking  at  the  thought  of  the  super- 
intendent for  so  many  years ;  he  has  been 
afraid  of  losing  his  job  for  so  long,  that  a 
furtive,  hunted  manner  has  become  a  sort 
of  second  nature  to  him,  and  he  peers  about 
between  the  looms  as  if  he  expected  to  be 
caught  and  kicked  for  something. 

You  can't  expect  Jimmie  to  be  a  man  when 
he  has  lived  a  cowering  slave  since  he  was 
thirteen.  That  is  not  the  way  men  are  made. 

ft  Look  at  that  line,"  said  Jimmie.  He 
pointed  over  the  high  window  ledge.  It  was 
nearly  noon  and  a  dozen  men  with  full  dinner 
pails  were  filing  into  the  factory  yard. 

"  Late,  aren't  they  ?  "  I  said.  He  read  my 
lips  and  understood. 

"  Devil  a  bit,"  he  screeched,  above  the  roar 
of  the  looms,  "  On  time !  the  whistle  will 
blow  in  a  minute." 

The  whistle  blew  and  then  he  told  me. 

The  men  were  bringing  the  dinners  to 
their  wives  and  daughters  who  worked  at  the 
looms.  They  were  all  old  men  ;  all  of  them 
over  forty  ; — too  old  to  work. 

In  the  New  England  factory  towns  the 
women  earn  the  living  and  the  men  wash  and 
cook  and  look  after  the  neighbor's  children. 

54 


Jimmie,  the  weaver 

While  they  are  both  young  enough  the  moth- 
ers and  fathers  work  in  the  factories  together. 

This  is  a  fine  thing  for  conjugal  felicity, — 
this  working  together  of  husband  and  wife. 
Of  course  they  get  no  chance  to  speak  to  one 
another  at  the  factory  ;  and  there  are  so  many 
things  to  do  around  "  home  "  that  they  don't 
get  much  chance  there  either,  until  the  sup- 
per dishes  are  washed  up  at  eight  or  nine 
o'clock.  Then, — if  they  are  not  tired,  and 
the  baby  is  asleep  so  they  cannot  get  acquainted 
with  it, — is  when  they  have  their  conversa- 
tions about  art,  and  literature,  and  the  merits 
of  the  latest  opera.  As  they  are  seldom  tired, 
this  is  the  pleasantest  time  of  the  day.  The 
strain  of  watching  the  looms  all  day  on  their 
feet  is  removed  and  they  thoroughly  enjoy 
the  relaxation. 

Of  course  they  cannot  go  about  much.  If 
they  should  be  out  two  or  three  nights  a  week 
at  the  opera  it  might  impair  their  health. 

Daylight  comes  quickly  when  you're  out  till 
twelve  or  one.  Then,  too,  there's  no  one  to 
leave  the  baby  with.  It  has  been  tended  all 
day  by  someone  else. 

When  both  mother  and  father,  all  winter 
long,  go  into  the  factory  at  day-break  and 

55 


Forgings  of  the  new 

don't  come  out  till  nightfall,  there  are  a  few 
things  about  "  home  "  to  be  done,  both  be- 
fore they  go,  and  after  they  return. 

For  example,  there  is  the  washing.  By 
getting  up  before  five  o'clock — two  or  three 
hours  before  daylight — and  working  together 
by  the  light  of  a  kerosene  lamp,  they  can  get 
that  done.  Then  comes  the  ironing ;  they 
handle  that  the  same  way.  The  baby  makes 
washing  and  ironing  before  daylight  a  pretty 
steady  job. 

Then  there  is  the  breakfast,  scanty  enough  ; 
they  have  to  hurry  so.  Seven  o'clock  comes 
so  soon  in  the  winter,  and  they  cannot  afford 
to  be  docked ;  they  run  that  risk  all  day. 

Then  there  is  the  baby.  If  the  baby  had 
any  sense  it  wouldn't  expect  attention  from  a 
mother  who  worked  all  day  in  the  factory  and 
had  to  do  the  cooking  and  dishwashing  and 
marketing  and  sewing  and  washing  and  iron- 
ing before  daylight  and  after  dark.  But  ba- 
bies haven't  any  sense.  If  they  had  they 
might  blow  up  the  universe,  or  refuse  to  be 
born  ;  but  they  haven't. 

The  mothers  who  work  all  the  week  in  the 
factories  for  six  or  seven  dollars  pay  some 
young  girl  ( under  thirteen )  or  some  old  man 
56 


Jimmie,  the  weaver 

( over  forty )  two  or  three  dollars  a  week  for 
looking  after  their  babies. 

The  babies'  idea  of  a  mother  is  a  man  with 
a  bottle  of  thin  milk. 

The  mothers'  net  compensation  for  a  week's 
work  is  three  or  four  dollars  and  the  pleas- 
ure of  hearing  their  babies  cry  for  someone 
else, — the  one  they  are  used  to,  who  feeds 
them. 

On  Sunday,  if  the  washing  and  sewing  are 
caught  up  and  the  house  doesn't  need  clean- 
ing ( no  nice  person  can  bear  to  see  a  work- 
ing man's  house  that  is  not  clean ),  perhaps 
the  mother  and  father  may  have  an  hour  or 
two  to  play  with  the  baby,  or  get  a  breath  of 
sun  and  air. 

It  is  a  great  life,  this  life  of  a  man  and  a 
woman  together,  sharing  their  common  tasks, 
— the  poets  say  so.  They  haven't,  of  course, 
much  to  occupy  them  except  work,  but  they 
have  plenty  of  that,  and  that  is  the  only  thing 
the  weavers  are  afraid  of  losing. 

At  least  Jimmie  says  so. 

Why  they  should  be  afraid  of  losing  work 
is  a  mystery.  The  nice  people  surely  don't 
want  to  do  it.  But  Jimmie  says  when  work 
is  slack  "  the  kids  goes  hungry." 

57 


Forgings  of  the  new 

Doubtless  they  cannot  save  very  much  on 
six  or  seven  dollars  a  week  and  the  rent  to 

Pay- 
As  soon  as  the  babies  grow  up  and  look 
large  enough  not  to  make  their  "  age :  thir- 
teen "  certificate  a  lie  on  its  face,  it  will  be 
easier ;  their  wages  will  then  help  out. 

Jimmie  says,  "  you  always  think  good  times 
is  coming  but  they  always  beats  you  some- 
how. When  the  kids  grows  up  it  don't  seem 
to  make  no  difference.  The  more  comes  in 
the  more  goes  out,  it  seems  like." 

The  double-loom  is  a  threatening  monster. 
Jimmie  doesn't  know  much  about  capital- 
ism, but  you  can't  fool  him  about  the  double- 
loom.      The   double-loom   always   brings   a 
strike  at  first.     The  man  fights  the  machine. 
The  double-loom  system  was  developed 
some  years  ago.     It  was  born  in  the  textile 
mills  of  Philadelphia  ;  that's  why  people  were 
so  slow  in  hearing  about  it. 

In  Philadelphia  the  double-loom  system  is 
employed  in  the  weaving  of  all  woolens,  ex- 
cept the  heaviest  fabrics  and  those  most  dif- 
ficult to  weave.  In  the  light  fabrics  for  sum- 
mer wear  one  weaver  frequently  operates  four 
looms.  The  Philadelphia  weaver  receives 

58 


Jimmie,  the  weaver 

no  greater  pay  now  for  the  operation  of  four 
looms  than  was  received  five  years  ago  for  the 
operation  of  one.  The  pay  of  many  weavers 
is  less  than  eight  dollars  per  week.  Women 
are  preferred  as  weavers  in  many  mills  be- 
cause of  their  expertness  and  "  tractability." 

Even  if  extra  compensation  were  allowed, 
the  double-loom  system  would  be  murderous. 

"  Look,"  said  Jimmie,  at  the  top  of  his 
voice,  after  the  nooning  was  over  and  the 
crashing  had  begun  again,  "  you  wouldn't 
think  that  they  was  doin'  anything,  would 
you  ? " 

Here  the  girls  had  but  one  loom.  They 
could  look  after  their  neighbor's  for  a  few 
minutes  if  brief  absence  were  necessary.  They 
stood  about,  quiet,  unmoved,  reposeful  in  the 
deafening  din. 

I  looked  at  the  nearest  girl.  Her  face  was 
pale  and  she  was  as  reposeful  as  the  others  ; 
but  her  repose,  as  that  of  the  others,  was  the 
repose  of  nervous  tension.  Her  eyes,  ap- 
parently roving,  were  keenly  watchful,  and 
her  ears  were  acock  for  the  slightest  noise 
which  would  indicate  a  break,  or  a  float  or 
other  fault  in  the  swiftly  running  threads. 
Even  as  I  looked,  she  sprang  like  a  cat  to 

59 


Forgings  of  the  new 

her  loom,  her  nimble  fingers  flew  for  an  in- 
stant so  rapidly  I  could  not  follow  them,  and 
then  she  relapsed  quietly  into  the  old  attitude 
of  repose. 

"  The  nervous  strain  of  this  work  is  devil- 
ish!" I  hissed  into  Jimmie's  ear;  and  I 
thought  of  the  nice  people  running  about  the 
city  shops  and  buying  the  lives  of  these  girls 
in  their  bargains  in  dimities,  challies,  mulles 
and  organdies. 

"  I  bet  you,"  grinned  Jimmie,  roaring  and 
screeching  alternately,  "  but  s'pose  they  was 
tendin'  three  or  four  of  'em  !  That  'ud  lay 
'em  out  in  a  few  years.  Then  they'd  have  to 
have  their  hands  and  eyes  in  several  places  at 
onct.  They  gets  docked  if  they  spoils  a 
piece  ; — it's  took  out  o'  their  wages.  That's 
why  I  quit  runnin'  a  loom.  My  fines  was  so 
big  I  owed  the  company  money  every  pay 
day.  If  I'd  a'  been  runnin'  more'n  one  loom 
I'd  be  owin*  'em  money  yet." 

Jimmie  laughed  a  loud,  mirthless  laugh 
above  the  crash  of  the  machinery, — "  the  loud 
laugh  that  speaks  the  vacant  mind." 

The  double-loom  system  originated  with 
the  weavers  themselves.  When  a  weaver  was 
not  at  work,  the  one  whose  loom  was  next  in 

60 


Jimmie,  the  weaver 

line  asked  to  be  allowed  to  run  the  two  looms. 
This  request  was  frequently  granted,  and  the 
operative  made  double  wages.  Mill  owners, 
observing  that  one  weaver  could,  in  an  emer- 
gency, do  what  until  then  was  considered  the 
work  of  two,  made  it  a  rule  that  two  looms 
should  be  run,  instead  of  one.  This  aroused 
a  storm  of  protest  at  the  time,  but  it  has 
since  been  generally  enforced  in  Philadelphia. 

A  single-loom  system  cannot  compete  with 
a  double-loom  system. 

When  one  factory  grinds  up  more  human 
life  than  another  factory,  competition  does 
the  rest. 

:t  The  rest  o*  'em  has  got  to  come  to  it," 
says  Jimmie. 

Jimmie  lives  in  one  of  the  company's  houses 
built  all  in  a  row.  There  are  no  fences  and 
no  gardens.  The  grass  is  trampled  flat. 

"  Do  they  make  you  live  there, — in  their 
houses  ? " 

Jimmie  cocked  an  eye  and  looked  about ; 
then  he  came  close  up  to  me.  "  No,  they 
don't  say  nothin'  about  it ;  but  when  they  has 
to  let  a  feller  go,  it's  generally  the  feller  that 
lives  in  the  houses  the  company  don't  own. 
/  lives  in  a  company  house.  I  got  one  boy 

61 


Forgings  of  the  new 

and  two  girls  here  in  the  factory  and  I  don't 
take  no  chances." 

:'  What  a  splendid  encouragement  for  the 
workers  to  own  their  own  homes ! "  I  thought. 

If  a  whole  family,  like  Jimmie's,  works 
and  saves  and  buys  a  little  hut  of  their  own, 
it  is  used  against  them.  They'll  work  cheaper 
before  they'll  leave  it; — and  workmen's  houses 
are  built  by  the  company  to  rent  for  profit, 
not  to  stand  empty  at  a  loss. 

Jimmie  is  a  politician. 

He  does  not  wait  for  a  house  to  fall  on 
him  before  he  catches  on  ;  that  is  certain. 

He  evidently  hates  to  be  everlastingly 
under  the  eye  of  the  company ; — he  would  at 
least  like  to  shake  off  the  incubus  in  his  home 
life  and  have  another  landlord,  but  he  has 
been  crushed  too  long ;  his  manhood  has 
long  since  dwindled  into  mere  transparent 
craft. 

Jimmie  is  the  product  of  the  system. 

Competition  to  make  goods  at  a  profit 
made  Jimmie  ;  and  it  is  making  his  children 
on  the  same  model.  It  is  a  wonderful  sys- 
tem for  preserving  and  dignifying  human  life. 
Jimmie's  children's  children  are  not  yet  in 
the  mills;  they  look  under  "  age  :  thirteen." 
62 


Jimmie,  the  weaver 

Good  people  are  saying  in  the  newspapers 
that  "  childhood  shall  be  sacredly  preserved 
for  the  playground,  the  school-room,  and  the 
home." 

"  The  home  ":  that  is  deeply  moving  ! 

A  home  which,  instead  of  a  mother  and 
father,  has  a  tired  man  and  woman  who 
go  away  at  daylight  and  return  after  dark; 
that  is  a  home  to  "sacredly  preserve,"  in- 
deed. 

In  1875  or  thereabout  weavers  made  fifty 
to  sixty  dollars  a  month  running  one  loom. 
Now  they  have  to  run  three  or  four  looms 
and  drop  out,  nervous  wrecks,  at  forty-five, 
— to  earn  thirty  to  thirty-five  dollars. 

Miserable  discontented  strikers !  What 
country  could  be  prosperous  with  such  a 
greedy  working  class  ?  Are  they  never  satis- 
fied ?  Do  they  expect  to  live  as  people  live 
who  have  an  "  independent  income  "  ? 

This  is  the  greatest  nation  in  the  world, — 
and  the  most  prosperous.  We  are  produc- 
ing $2,000,000,000  worth  of  goods  more  than 
we  can  consume.  The  statistics  prove  it. 

"  Do  you  think  you  could  consume  an- 
other shirt,  Jimmie,  out  of  the  $2,000,000,000 
if  you  had  wages  enough  to  buy  it  ? " 


Forgings  of  the  new 

But  Jimmie  shook  his  head ;  he  doesn't 
understand  politics ;  and  he  has  learned  by  a 
long  and  successful  career  that  if  you  expect 
to  keep  your  job  there  is  only  one  way  to 
vote. 

Jimmie  never  takes  any  chances. 


THE  CREEPING  DARK 

"Students  of  the  University  of  Chicago  were  in- 
structed yesterday  in  the  management  and  operation 
of  great  railroads.  In  the  address  by  the  Assistant 
Second  Vice-President  of  the  Illinois  Central,  the 
statement  which  apparently  impressed  the  students 
most  was  that  the  age  limit  at  which  men  were 
taken  into  railroad  employ  was  35  years." 

— Chicago  Tribune. 

It  is  an  interesting  commentary  on  modern 
business  life  that  there  is  no  place  in  it  for 
the  old.  Life-wisdom,  mature  judgment, 
soul  poise,  are  not  of  commercial  value. 
The  intangibles  are  below  par  in  a  profit- 
seeking  world. 

In  the  current  industrial  organizations,  at 
the  moment  at  which  it  would  seem  that  a 
man  is  best  equipped  for  efficient  service  he 
ceases  to  be  of  use. 

This  is  because  to  keep  the  present  social 
order  going,  physical  intelligence  is  alone  re- 
quired of  the  mass, — muscle  intelligence,  as 
it  were.  Men  are  available  only  as  they 
are  human  machines ;  unthinking,  plodding 
creatures  of  routine. 

Among  railroad  employees  there  survives 
a  fragment  of  a  traditional  dialogue  between 

65 


Forgings  of  the  new 

the  general  manager  of  a  great  western  rail- 
road and  an  employee  whom  he  was  repri- 
manding : 

The  Employee :  "  But  sir,  I  thought—" 

The  General  Manager :  "  Damn  you,  sir. 
You  are  not  paid  for  thinking." 

Under  a  military  despotism  the  soldier  is 
not  paid  for  thinking.  He  murders  without 
compunction  men  who  never  did  him  any 
harm  at  his  superior's  command  and  gives 
his  life  in  battles  not  his  own. 

Under  an  industrial  despotism  the  worker 
is  not  paid  for  thinking. 

He,  too,  gives  his  life  in  battles  not  his 
own. 

Despotism  has  many  forms. 

For  Profit's  sake  the  workers  produce,  and 
produce  and  produce ;  and  when  they  are 
old  they  are  cashiered. 

When  they  have  given  their  lives  in  service 
to  society,  society  confronts  them  with  a  shut 
door  for  their  pains. 

Society  has  no  place  today  for  the  old. 

The  great  wholesale  houses  of  Chicago 
take  boys  at  sixteen  years  of  age. 

Inside  of  a  year  they  are  doing  a  man's 
work, — at  a  boy's  pay. 

66 


The  creeping  dark 

This  is  the  young  and  ambitious  period  of 
their  lives.  They  have  hope  in  their  hearts ; 
the  inevitable  has  not  yet  bulked  against  their 
horizon. 

From  sixteen  to  thirty-five  they  work  hard 
and  faithfully.  A  few  out  of  the  hundred 
thousands  become  department  managers  or 
get  similar  positions  of  service  that  involve  a 
petty  authority  and  a  little  judgment  in  mat- 
ters of  no  particular  importance. 

The  vast  majority  reach  thirty-five  before 
their  reason  awakens  with  the  judgment  of 
manhood  and  they  realize  that  they  have 
given  the  best  part  of  their  lives  to  a  cease- 
less grind  for  other  men's  profits,  and  that 
it  is  now  too  late  to  do  anything  for  them- 
selves. 

If  before  hope  expires  they  look  about  for 
new  relations  of  service  they  are  confronted 
by  such  interesting  rules  as  are  operative  in 
the  Illinois  Central. 

At  the  moment  when,  under  a  rational 
social  order,  a  man's  years  would  best  qualify 
him  for  mature  judgment  and  sound  and  in- 
telligent decisions,  the  present  social  order 
meets  his  application  to  serve  it  with  the  curt 
and  positive  assurance  that  he  is  too  old. 

67 


Forgings  of  the  new 

This  base — nay,  infamous — humiliation  is 
constantly  suffered  today  by  men  who  are 
robust,  strong  and  able. 

What,  then,  are  they  to  do  ? 

Stay  in  the  rut ;  die  in  the  rut ;  or  starve. 

From  the  moment  that  an  intelligent  man 
awakes  to  the  realization  that  he  has  no  future 
save  one  of  routine,  treadmill  plodding,  he 
gets  his  bread  at  the  price  of  his  manhood. 
The  life-flame  flickers  and  goes  out.  His 
eyes  no  longer  shine.  His  tale  is  told.  He 
then  begins  a  long  period  of  waiting ;  wait- 
ing for  death.  He  may  indulge  himself  with 
a  few  creature  -  comforts ;  but  he  has  no 
longer  to  be  reckoned  with.  He  may  go  or 
stay. 

So  he  continues  at  his  boyhood's  employ- 
ment ;  at  his  boyhood's  wages,  or  very  little 
more ;  until  he  gets  in  the  way  of  some  short- 
tempered  manager. 

Then  his  store  coat,  worn  at  the  elbows,  is 
gone  from  the  hook.  He  doesn't  come  any 
more.  His  floor-mates  forget  about  him. 

During  the  ambitious  period  of  a  man's 
life  today  his  energies  are  sapped  by  a  system 
which  throws  him  away  like  a  limp  rag  as 
soon  as  the  sap  is  wrung  out  of  him,  or 

68 


The  creeping  dark 

awakening  intelligence  provokes  a  normal 
dissatisfaction. 

Thousands  and  thousands  and  thousands 
are  thus  ground  through  this  frightful,  imper- 
sonal mill,  the  mere  dry  grist  of  a  profit- 
making  civilization  which  has  no  use  for  the 
thing  that  life  is  meant  for — the  human  soul. 

Life  is  a  progression ;  an  unfoldment ;  a 
spiritual  development. 

When  your  soul  stops  reaching  out  for 
higher  things  ;  when  your  hope  is  gone,  and 
your  ambition  is  gone  ;  you  may  be  walking 
about  the  streets,  and  riding  on  trains,  but 
you  are  a  dead  man.  Your  life  is  behind  you. 

A  society  which  reduces  human  beings  to 
the  dead  level  of  a  machine-like  routine; 
which  smothers  the  creative  instinct ;  which 
extinguishes  hope  before  mid-life  is  reached, 
is  only  a  form  of  organized  death. 

And  yet  it  is  this  vast  horde  of  patient, 
plodding  slaves,  dulled  by  routine  and  soul- 
quenched  by  years  of  exploitation,  who  are 
keeping  their  fellows  in  slavery.  They  look 
with  dull  eyes  upon  ideals  for  a  ransomed 
society.  They  do  not  think  they  can  be 
benefited.  They  do  not  think  at  all.  Dead 
men  do  not  think. 

69 


Forgings  of  the  new 

A  clerk  who  has  worked  ten  hours  a  day 
for  twenty  years  without  a  day's  vacation 
looks  at  a  caged  canary  and  exclaims  :  "  Poor 
imprisoned  little  thing." 

There  is  never  so  sorry  a  slave  as  the  slave 
who  imagines  he  is  free. 

And  day  by  day,  step  by  step,  age  is  creep- 
ing on. 

It  is  a  sad  thing,  this  realization  that  the 
world  has  no  place  for  the  old. 

The  little  children  still  love  grandfather 
and  grandmother. 

But  their  place  by  the  fireside  is  gone. 

The  fireside  itself  is  gone. 

Hurry  into  your  grave  old  man.  You 
have  worked  hard  it  is  true.  You  have  been 
making  things  for  others'  comfort  all  your 
life. 

But  this  is  a  busy  world.  There  are  profits 
to  make. 

And  you  are  in  the  way. 


70 


HOW  FAR  THE  LITTLE 
CANDLE— 

Once  at  a  meeting  at  which  John  S.  Crosby  had 
been  explaining  the  iniquity  of  private  ownership 
of  land,  a  man  approached  him  and  said :  "  Mr. 
Crosby,  I  realize  that  what  you  say  is  true,  but 
what  can  a  man  do  single-handed  in  a  community 
like  this?  I'm  only  one."  "Well,"  replied  Mr. 
Crosby,  "  be  one,  most  men  are  nothing." 

Out  in  Colorado,  an  hour's  ride  up  beauti- 
ful Boulder  canon,  one  comes  upon  a  place 
where  the  crystal  stream  divides,  and  while 
half  of  it  pursues  its  natural  stony  path,  the 
other  half  runs  for  a  dozen  yards  quietly  along 
a  sedgy  bank  and  then  suddenly  flings  it- 
self back  into  the  embrace  of  its  mate,  from 
whence  the  single  stream  flows  onward  to 
the  plain. 

At  the  point  where  the  stream  divides  there 
once  stood  a  mill.  This  was  in  the  seventies, 
when  the  grizzlies  would  poke  their  heads 
out  of  a  clump  of  cedars  and  look  at  you 
with  their  little,  cunning  eyes ;  the  rattle- 
snakes coiled  themselves  upon  the  warm 
rocks,  and  the  beavers  sought  out  the  still 
water  in  which  to  indulge  their  taste  in  archi- 
tecture. 

71 


Forgings  of  the  new 

The  animals  are  gone  now — all  but  the 
chipmunk ;  he  remains  to  chatter  his  derision. 
His  minuteness  has  saved  him. 

In  the  mill  race  the  beavers  found  an  ideal 
place  for  their  building. 

When  the  sun  sank  behind  the  peaks  of  the 
Great  Divide  and  darkness  fell  upon  the  can- 
on the  little  architects  would  begin.  They 
would  build  and  build.  Two  or  three  nights 
would  do  the  business.  The  race  would  be  so 
choked  with  beaver  huts  that  enough  water 
would  not  come  through  to  grind  a  hickory- 
nut.  It  looked  as  though  the  men  would  have 
to  quit  trying  to  crush  ore  and  go  to  killing 
beavers.  But  a  mountaineer  who  dropped 
in  had  an  idea. 

He  told  them  if  they  would  hang  out  a 
lantern  the  beavers  would  stop  bothering. 

So  they  stripped  a  young  pine  and  hung  a 
lamp  on  it. 

After  that  at  night  the  beavers  would  slide 
into  the  race,  blink  up  at  the  light  and  then 
slide  back  into  the  rapids  again,  seeking  new 
foundations. 

Night  after  night  through  long  years  the 
lantern  hung  there,  until  "  the  light  at  Coan's 
mill "  was  as  a  star  to  steer  by. 

72 


How  far  the  little  candle— 

It  cheered  the  lonely  mountaineer  as  he 
climbed  the  long  reaches  in  the  darkness 
to  his  hillside  cabin ;  and  the  driver  of 
the  belated  stage  looked  for  its  cheerful 
ray  again  and  again  as  the  canon  widened 
and  narrowed  above  the  sharply  declining 
road,  anon  disclosing,  anon  obscuring  with 
its  craggy  steeps,  the  mill  far  down  the 
gorge. 

Men  in  the  mass  are  very  much  like  beav- 
ers ;  their  activity  is  as  ceaseless,  oftentimes 
as  instinctive  and  unreasoning,  sometimes  as 
collectively  destructive. 

They  do  not  mean  to  overthrow  the  things 
that  wiser  men  have  builded ;  they  do  not 
mean  to  discard  the  principles  that  make  for 
race  progress ;  but  they,  like  the  beavers, 
work  mostly  in  the  dark. 

They  do  not  understand. 

In  building  their  petty  fortunes  they  choke 
the  life  stream. 

They  do  not  see  there  is  a  mill  to  run — 
unless  there  is  a  light  to  show  them. 

In  almost  every  town  there  is  some  one 
personally  akin  to  this  light  in  Boulder  canon; 
some  one  soul  which  shines  steadily  on  amid 

73 


Forgings  of  the  new 

the  petty  scandals,  the  gossip,  and  the  empty 
sound  and  fury  of  provincial  life. 

Such  a  soul  may  possess  none  of  the  quali- 
ties of  leadership ;  no  power  of  individual 
initiative,  no  equipment  for  what  men  call 
martyrdom. 

Yet  it  is  a  light — a  mind  still  open  to  new 
thoughts  and  new  disclosures  of  eternal  truth. 

Only  so  it  burns  steadily,  steadily. 

You,  brother,  may  be  that  light.  You 
need  not  always  speak ;  only  now  and  then 
a  quiet  word — when  a  principle  is  in  the  bal- 
ance. 

For  it  is  not  what  you  say  that  moves  men ; 
it  is  what  you  are.  They  look  behind  your 
words  at  you. 

You  may  be  alone;  you  may  be  "only 
one ; "  but  in  that  day  when  your  little  com- 
munity shall  be  swept  off  its  feet  by  unreason- 
ing passion,  or  false  enthusiasm,  then  trim 
your  lamp  ;  its  light  is  needed  then. 

Some  will  be  deterred  by  it ;  some  will  be 
guided  by  it ;  and  a  few  will  look  for  it  and 
rely  upon  it. 

Thus  shall  you  help  the  Plan. 

Nor  knowest  thou  what  argument 

Thy  life  to  thy  neighbor's  creed  hath  lent. 

74 


RENUNCIATION 

"Tolstoy  seems  to  have  carried  his  theories  into 
practice  even  in  the  smallest  details  of  life.  On  one 
occasion  he  mounted  a  bicycle  belonging  to  his  aris- 
tocratic son.  He  soon  mastered  the  art  of  balance, 
and  was  delighted  by  the  swift,  smooth  motion. 
His  wife  noticed  his  enjoyment  and  immediately 
offered  to  give  him  a  machine.  Tolstoy  at  first  ac- 
cepted, but  on  reconsidering  the  matter  he  decided 
that  as  other  less  favored  mortals  could  not  afford 
to  possess  bicycles  he  had  no  right  to  one  either." 

— London  News. 

Leo  Tolstoy  has  probably  done  as  much 
to  stir  the  conscience  and  arouse  a  hatred 
and  disgust  of  the  world's  injustice  as  any 
living  person. 

To  paint  human  society  as  it  is,  in  all  its 
hideous  hypocrisy,  seems  to  be  his  mission  ; 
and  he  does  it  well.  His  indictment  is  scath- 
ing, and  he  hits  the  mark.  There  is  no 
escaping  him. 

But  when  the  unattractive  social  edifice  has 
been  leveled  there  must  begin  the  process 
of  construction ;  and  negation  is  not  a  sta- 
ble superstructure.  To  renounce  is  not  to 
build. 

It  is  Tolstoy's  remedy,  so  far  as  he  offers 
one,  that  does  not  satisfy. 

75 


Forgings  of  the  new 

No  one  can  fail  to  respect  the  man  who 
voluntarily  denies  himself  comforts  and  satis- 
factions that  other  men  do  not  have  ;  but  we 
may  admire  a  chivalrous  action  even  when 
we  are  convinced  of  its  social  futility. 

To  deny  oneself  a  bicycle  because  all  men 
do  not  have  bicycles  does  not  help  other 
men  to  have  bicycles. 

If  bicycles  grew  like  North  Poles  or  Equa- 
tors,— only  one  in  the  world ;  not  enough 
under  any  circumstances  to  go  round, — Tol- 
stoy's generous  renunciation  might  minister 
to  human  need.  Bicycles,  however,  can  be 
duplicated ;  as  many  can  be  produced  as 
there  are  human  bipeds  to  bestride  them. 

By  the  same  token,  if  Tolstoy  were  to  stop 
eating  there  would  be  no  lessening  of  the 
number  of  Russian  children  who  go  to  bed 
hungry. 

It  is  better  for  one  to  eat  his  fill  that  he 
may  have  the  strength  to  strive  that  all  others 
may  be  fed. 

In  a  world  in  which  there  is  enough  for 
all,  he  who  denies  himself  his  needed  share 
may  unwittingly  force  a  like  denial  upon 
others,  and  encourage,  in  the  thoughtless 
strong,  a  grasping  spirit. 
7* 


Renunciation 

The  principle  of  renunciation  is  not  a  true 
principle.  It  may  have  its  roots  in  pride. 

I  will  someday  refuse  to  allow  you  to  gain 
for  yourself  a  fancied  nobility  by  my  ignoble 
acceptance  of  the  thing  you  renounce. 

You  shall  serve  me  if  you  like,  and  I  will 
love  you  for  it,  and  serve  you  in  return  ;  but 
you  shall  sacrifice  for  me  not  a  bit. 

The  free  spirit  hates  a  debt. 

Renunciation  is  a  cardinal  principle  of  a 
ruling-class  religion ;  for-us-to-preach  and 
you-to-practice  kind.  It  has  been  taught  the 
workers  ever  since  wages  were  a  reality, — 
and  before. 

The  people  have  grown  accustomed  to  the 
idea  that  it  is  a  virtue  to  "  give  up  "  ;  a  very 
agreeable  philosophy  in  the  eyes  of  the  idlers  ; 
it  makes  the  workers  submissive. 

The  ruling  class  furnishes  the  teachers. 
When  a  working  class  teacher  arises  he  is 
put  to  death  or  otherwise  discredited  as  a 
disturber  of  "  order."  A  Carpenter  tried  it 
once. 

Into  this  teaching  of  the  virtues  of  renun- 
ciation has  been  subtly  woven  a  covert  bribe. 
"  Give  up  in  this  world  and  heaven  is  for 
you,"  is  the  refrain  of  it.  And  the  poor 

77 


Forgings  of  the  new 

people  like  the  idea  of  getting  something 
sometime. 

They've  gone  without  so  very,  very  long. 

"  Lay  up  for  yourselves  treasure  in  heaven," 
sings  the  priest  as  his  fingers  clutch  the  col- 
lection box. 

It  is  a  pretty  song. 

It  seems  to  the  people  as  if  they  were 
putting  money  out  at  interest.  They  deny 
themselves  the  fun  of  spending  it  now,  to 
enjoy  the  fun  of  spending  it,  with  the  in- 
crease, later  on. 

Middle  Ages  literature  is  full  of  examples 
of  spectacular  renunciation.  Men  used  to 
go  out  of  the  towns  and  live  in  caves  in  the 
hills ;  and  never  wash,  nor  comb  their  hair. 

They  were  called  "  holy  "  men. 

They  renounced  everything  except  rags, 
and  lice,  and  the  crusts  of  bread  the  "sin- 
ners "  brought  them. 

Some  of  these  men  were  fakirs,  but  most 
of  them  were  sincere  ;  they  voluntarily  suf- 
fered cold  and  hunger  in  the  belief  that  the 
world  was  to  be  "  saved  "  that  way. 

But  they  did  not  make  the  world  a  whit 
easier  to  live  in.  Down  in  the  towns  other 
men  and  women, — and  little  children, — were 
78 


Renunciation 

fasting  too,  and  not  taking  any  holy  credit 
for  it.  They  were  working  and  producing 
clothing  and  shelter  and  food  that  the  ruling 
class  was  taking  from  them,  just  as  it  is  do- 
ing in  the  towns  today.  And  when  a  mem- 
ber of  the  ruling  class  would  do  some  thing 
which  he  ought  not  to  have  done  or  leave 
undone  some  thing  which  he  ought  to  have 
done  and  there  was  no  health  in  him,  he 
would  take  a  little  of  the  food  which  the 
hungry  men  and  women  and  little  children 
of  the  town  were  producing  and  carry  it  up 
and  feed  the  holy  man  with  it,  and  the  holy 
man  would  howl  and  sing  and  do  things  with 
his  hands,  just  as  the  holy  men  do  today,  for 
provender. 

The  only  difference  is,  that  today  the  cave 
of  the  holy  man  is  better  than  it  was  in  the 
Middle  Ages  and  it  has  a  bathroom  in  it. 

But  the  truth  to  be  gleaned  is  that  the  re- 
nunciations of  the  holy  men  then  served  no 
more  to  abolish  social  injustice  than  do  the 
annunciations  of  the  holy  men  now. 

To  renounce  is  not  to  solve  the  problem. 
It  is  to  run  away  from  it. 

That  Tolstoy  believes  the  world  may  be 
saved  by  renunciation  is  not  to  be  doubted ; 

79 


Forgings  of  the  new 

but  he  has  had  his  fling.  He  lived  a  fast  and 
luxurious  life  :  he  practically  exhausted  mod- 
ern social  possibilities.  He  was  driven  out 
into  the  air  by  satiety.  He  is  tired  of  it  all. 

To  do  what  he  is  doing  may  be  best, — for 
him. 

Life  is  the  arena  in  which  experience  is  to 
be  gained.  Tolstoy  is  gaining  his. 

But  noble  and  sincere  soul  that  he  is,  his 
principles  of  renunciation  are  abnormal  and 
out  of  harmony  with  life. 

The  pleasures  which  surfeited  Tolstoy,  and 
disgusted  him  with  social  life,  are  but  normal 
pleasures  twisted  out  of  focus  by  an  evil  so- 
cial system. 

Tolstoy  sees  that  no  one  can  be  happy  in 
such  an  evil  state  and  so  calls  upon  all  true 
souls  to  renounce  and  leave  the  state. 

But  there  is  another  thing  to  do. 

Stay  in  the  state  and  change  it ;  make  it  the 
instrument  of  happiness  instead  of  the  instru- 
ment of  tyranny  and  injustice. 

The  state  is  but  a  tool ;  the  people  can 
make  of  it  what  they  will.  It  is  like  a  ship ; 
it  can  be  steered  in  pleasant  places  ; — and  it 
can  drift  upon  the  rocks ;  there  must  always 
be  enough  true  men  to  navigate  it. 
80 


Renunciation 

To  a  man  who  stands  heartsick  and  weary, 
contemplating  the  hypocrisy,  the  shameless 
greed,  the  fathomless  injustice  of  human  so- 
ciety, the  easiest  solution  which  presents  it- 
self is  to  go  away  from  it  all ;  to  fly  to  some 
quiet  spot  and  live  out  his  individual  life  in 
purity  alone,  earning  his  bread  with  his  hands 
and  eating  it  in  peace. 

But  this  is  not  to  solve  the  problem  ;  it  is 
to  seek  refuge  from  it. 

No  man  is  to  be  blamed  for  doing  this  ;  it  is 
surely  something,  at  least,  to  get  off  the  back 
of  labor ;  his  own  life  sources  will  be  purer. 

Many  a  man  strives  greatly  in  the  cause  of 
justice  and  retires,  beaten,  at  the  end.  An 
overcome  hero  is  a  hero  still.  A  man  can  do 
only  what  he  may  and  no  single  blow  for 
liberty  is  struck  in  vain.  Because  we  may 
not  strive  through  to  the  end  should  ne'er 
persuade  us  not  to  strive  at  all. 

But  the  greatest  soul  is  yet  he  who,  heart- 
sick, weary  as  his  fellow,  hating  strife,  loving 
peace,  and  yearning,  too,  to  fly  and  leave  it 
all,  yet  stays  in  the  heat  and  dust  and  strug- 
gle of  the  world-old  conflict;  striving  on, 
hoping  against  hope  ;  believing  it  is  the  high- 
est because  it  is  the  hardest  test  of  manhood ; 

81 


Forgings  of  the  new 

whose  love  for  the  poor  tired  toilers  of  the 
world  is  so  great,  whose  human  sympathies 
are  so  wide  that  he  will  not  leave  his  brothers 
in  their  long  strife  so  long  as  he  has  strength 
to  stand. 

This  is  a  higher  than  renunciation,  for  it 
solves  the  individual  problem  in  the  social 
problem.  Until  the  social  whole  has  been 
perfected  we  have  reached  the  summit  of  the 
individual ;  strife  for  individual  supremacy 
now  ends  in  a  circle. 

Individual  men  are  no  better  or  no  worse 
than  they  were  two  thousand  years  ago.  The 
Nazarene  has  not  yet  been  surpassed  for  man- 
hood ;  Plato  for  philosophy  ;  Phidias  for  art ; 
Pericles  for  oratory; — and  Judas  Iscariot 
goes  about  today  in  a  frock  coat. 

The  progress  the  world  has  made  has  been 
social  progress.  We  moderns  have  improved 
the  uses  of  the  state  a  trifle  ;  that  is  all. 

To  see  this  truth  is  to  make  another  truth 
more  clear : 

We  may  deny  ourselves,  and  sacrifice,  and 
choke  back  our  natural  desires ; — and  this 
discipline  is  good  ;  it  may  refine  us  and  pur- 
ify us, — but  it  is  not  all :  it  leaves  our  great- 
est duty  unfulfilled. 

82 


Renunciation 

To  serve  the  social  whole  :  to  try  to  under- 
stand its  needs  and  its  crises  ;  to  do  the  thing 
from  day  to  day  which  will  most  make  for 
the  uplifting  of  the  entire  race ;  that  is  the 
problem  of  the  individual  life,  than  which  there 
is  no  greater. 

For  the  foremost  man  is  held  back  by  the 
hindmost  man  ;  the  universe  is  run  by  block- 
signals  ;  any  human  wreck,  anywhere,  closes 
the  line. 

Individual  salvation  is  a  lie  born  of  a  selfish 
heart,  and  when  we  most  think  we  are  out  of 
the  mire,  the  arm  of  the  Most  Neglected 
reaches  up  from  the  abyss  and  drags  us  back 
into  the  dark. 

Individual  growth  can  only  be  attained  by 
striving  to  perfect  the  social  whole.  When 
we  address  ourselves  collectively  to  perfecting 
the  lowliest  life ;  when  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity shall  at  last  allow  one  man  to  attain 
to  what  he  would  be  without  crushing  another 
in  the  process  ;  then  and  then  only  will  latent 
individual  powers  become  manifest ;  powers 
with  which,  who  knows  ?  we  may  read  the 
story  of  the  stars. 

We  can  never  really  build  ourselves  at  an- 
other's cost.  This  is  the  Law. 

83 


Forgings  of  the  new 

We  cannot  evade  the  duty  of  the  individual 
to  the  mass  ;  nor  the  duty  of  the  mass  to  the 
individual.  Life  is  one. 

To  renounce  life  is  to  betray  life. 

We  shall  stay  with  our  fellow ;  and  struggle 
beside  him  ;  and  suffer  with  him  ;  and,  if  need 
be,  die  with  him,  until  at  last  the  Dawn  shall 
come. 


MANHOOD'S  CRUCIBLE 

"  Like  as  a  goldsmith  bcateth  out  his  gold 
To  other  fashions  fairer  than  the  old, 
So  may  the  spirit,  learning  ever  more, 
In  ever  nobler  forms  its  life  enfold." 

—Sanskrit  (Bhartrihari). 

One  of  the  gladdest  experiences  that  can 
come  to  the  finite  mind  is  the  realization  that 
there  is  no  stage  in  human  progression  that 
is  final. 

It  may  be  set  down  as  self-evident  that  the 
man  who  thinks  he  has  attained  has  not  yet 
touched  the  skirts  of  attainment.  Dogmatism 
is  the  mark  of  arrested  development.  It 
registers  the  restriction  of  the  mental  and 
spiritual  horizon.  Light  cannot  reach  the 
soul  except  through  the  open  mind,  and  to 
seize  upon  one  truth  to  the  exclusion  of  other 
truths  is  to  hitch  your  wagon  to  a  fragment. 
Truth  is  one.  We  must  not  mistake  a  seg- 
ment of  the  circle  for  a  straight  line  because 
we  happen  to  stand  too  near  to  see  the  curve 
of  it. 

There  are  those  who  will  tell  you  that  if  it 
were  not  for  the  competitive  struggle  man- 
kind would  never  amount  to  anything ;  that 
strife  develops  character.  These  are  the 

tt 


Forgings  of  the  new 

ones  who  have  mistaken  the  segment  for  a 
straight  line  and  have  traveled  off  at  a  tan- 
gent. They  have  confused  the  idea  of  man's 
necessity  of  overcoming  Nature  with  the  idea 
of  man's  fighting  his  fellow,  until  one  idea 
has  been  lost  in  the  other. 

The  competitive  struggle  never  yet  pro- 
duced a  noble  man.  All  the  real  benefactors 
of  the  race  have  either  been  raised  above  it, 
pursuing  their  investigations  in  economic  se- 
curity, or  they  have  ignored  it  altogether  by 
deliberately  choosing  poverty  as  the  price  of 
their  integrity  of  spirit.  That  the  competi- 
tive struggle  could  produce  a  man  like  Jesus, 
or  Socrates,  or  Galileo,  or  Newton  is  un- 
thinkable. Strife  of  man  against  man  works 
moral  disintegration ;  the  only  thing  to  be 
won  by  it  is  a  soiled  plume. 

If  any  of  the  Successful  Ones  has  still  a 
streak  of  nobility  in  him,  it  is  because  he  has 
secretly  kept  some  little  corner  of  his  life 
sacred,  free  from  the  defilement  of  the  arena 
in  which  he  has  won  his  fancied  supremacy. 

The  competitive  struggle  develops  the  wolf- 
instincts  ;  you  have  only  to  read  the  face  of 
the  Successful  One  to  see  how  far  he  has  fallen 
short  of  nobility  of  character. 

86 


Manhood's  crucible 

Character  is  a  subtile  painter,  but  the  images 
she  limns  are  unmistakable. 

It  is  true  that  we  must  put  forth  our  powers 
in  order  to  grow.  We  must  live  either  at  the 
expense  of  work  or  at  the  expense  of  faculty. 
Inaction  rots  the  body  and  dulls  and  degrades 
the  soul. 

But  the  field  of  man's  striving  must  be  other 
than  his  fellow.  To  exploit  one  another  in 
competitive  warfare  is  the  surest  method  of 
stifling  race  progress.  He  who  advocates  the 
competitive  struggle  as  beneficent  has  a  wolf- 
philosophy  of  life  ;  his  idea  of  human  society 
is  not  yet  born.  By  his  belief  that  aquisitive- 
ness  and  combativeness  are  marks  of  supe- 
riority of  character  he  deceives  himself  and  de- 
ceives his  neighbor  and  unconsciously  helps  to 
keep  the  world  in  an  atmosphere  of  animalism. 

Animal  ethics  need  not  dominate  human 
society,  for  man  can  deliberately  increase  his 
food  supply.  All  nature  waits  to  help  him. 
We  are  meant  to  overcome  our  physical  en- 
vironment, not  each  other.  Nature  is  the 
field-of-the-cloth-of-gold  in  which  alone  fair 
honor  is  to  be  gained. 

And  if  you  would  see  Character,  look  into 
the  eyes  of  an  old  navigator;  one  who  has 

87 


Forgings  of  the  new 

struggled  with  the  winds  and  the  waves  and 
mastered  them.  In  him  you  will  see  none  of 
those  peculiar  little  wrinkles  about  the  brow 
and  eyes  that  mark  the  countenances  of  the 
Successful  Ones  ;  all  is  frank,  open  integrity. 
The  stars  and  wide  expanses  have  somehow 
gotten  into  his  soul  and  look  calmly  out  at  you. 

We  have  not  yet  really  comprehended  our 
intimate  physical  environment.  A  few  of  us 
have  been  reaching  out,  and  so  we  have  dis- 
covered rudimentary  principles  of  steam  and 
electricity  and  pneumatics  and  hydraulics; 
but  so  many  of  us  have  been  fighting  one 
another,  and  for  so  long,  that  we  still  are  liv- 
ing in  an  unfamiliar  universe. 

It  is  hope,  alone,  that  makes  life  possible 
to  some  ;  hope  that  men  may  yet  so  grow  in 
spiritual  perception  that  they  may  see  what 
character  really  is  and  how  it  may  be  devel- 
oped ;  what  we  are  here  for  and  how  beauti- 
ful life  might  be.  For  until  we  recognize  the 
truths  which  lie  at  our  feet  the  gates  of  uni- 
versal truth  will  be  closed  against  us.  Once 
we  get  upon  the  hills  our  yearning  for  wide 
horizons  is  awakened. 

Surely  we  must  some  day  see  the  absurdity 
of  our  economic  fear,  here  in  a  world  where 

88 


Manhood's  crucible 

fruit  trees  might  thrive  along  every  highway 
if  we  only  cared  to  plant  them. 

And  when  we  see  this  truth,  which  ought 
to  be  so  plain,  we  will  see  other  truths  which 
are  now  obscured ;  truths  which  will  revive 
dead  faiths  in  the  beneficence  of  the  Plan, 
and  lead  us  grandly  up  to  heights  of  being 
of  whose  clear  altitudes  the  race  has  not  yet 
dreamed. 

"  Man  is  not  Man  as  yet. 

Nor  shall  I  deem  his  object  served,  his  end 

Attained,  his  genuine  strength  put  fairly  forth, 

While  only  here  and  there  a  star  dispels 

The  darkness,  here  and  there  a  towering  mind 

O'erlooks  its  prostrate  fellows  ;  when  the  host 

Is  out  at  once  to  the  despair  of  night, 

When  all  mankind  alike  is  perfected, 

Equal  in  full-blown  powers — then,  not  till  then, 

I  say,  begins  man's  general  infancy." 


19 


THE  HERO 

"  Oh,  how  well  I  know  this.  Hero  phrases,  hero 
actions.  Always  ready  to  stick  your  hand  into  the 
fire,  Gosta ;  always  ready  to  throw  yourself  away. 
How  great  I  once  thought  this.  .  .  .  But  now 
I  tell  you  .  .  .  that  you  shall  quite  simply  go 
and  do  your  duty.  You  shall  not  dream  of  hero- 
ism, you  shall  not  dazzle  and  surprise,  you  shall 
look  to  it  that  your  name  is  not  too  often  on  the 
lips  of  the  people." 

— Selma  Lagerlof . 

In  every  human  being,  however  privileged 
his  advantages,  however  independent  his  po- 
sition, there  lurks  a  desire  for  approbation ; 
the  approbation  of  his  fellows  ;  not  for  what 
he  has  but  for  what  he  is.  To  be  loved  for 
one's  self  is  man's  nearest  approach  to  hap- 
piness. He  who  is  valued  for  what  he  has 
knows  not  the  joy  of  friendship,  of  comrade- 
love.  What  one  is  alone  brings  nectar-sweets 
like  these. 

If  you  are  poor  and  a  single  hand  reaches 
out  to  you  in  greeting,  then  you  may  know 
you  are  worth  while. 

If  you  are  rich  and  a  great  crowd  strains  to 
grasp  your  palm,  somewhere  in  the  shadows 
of  your  consciousness  the  mocking  imp  of 
Doubt  sits  grinning  at  you. 

90 


The  hero 

You  will  never  know  what  you  are  really 
worth,  what  men  really  care  for  you,  until 
you  stand  alone.  Your  helps  will  always  hide 
you. 

Resplendent  among  the  glittering  gods  of 
your  possession  you  will  sit  disconcerted  and 
ashamed  when  the  philosopher  goes  by  ;  for 
the  philosopher  gazes  with  calm  eyes  at  the 
man  instead  of  at  the  things  which  bolster 
him. 

The  world  looks  at  the  things ;  our  educa- 
tion, our  wealth,  our  social  position  ;  but  that 
is  because  to  the  vulgar  mind  things  are  easily 
to  be  understood,  but  men  not  at  all. 

It  is  awful  when  out  of  unwavering  eyes  a 
calm  soul  looks  at  us. 

We  cannot  take  refuge  then  in  a  Greek 
sonnet  we  have  scanned  nor  a  couplet  we 
have  wrought  out  of  Sanskrit.  We  cannot 
hide  behind  the  things  we  own,  nor  the  visit- 
ing cards  of  amiable  imbeciles  on  our  dress- 
ing-table. 

These  things  are  then  inconsequent  and 
impertinent  and  we  know  it  and  shrivel,  hu- 
miliated. 

We  are  ashamed  for  what  we  are  not  in 
the  presence  of  the  paltry  things  that  are. 

91 


Forgings  of  the  new 

Being  something  is  greater  than  having 
something;  this  we  know,  if  ever  into  our 
shadow  comes  a  ray  shot  from  a  soul  that  is. 

The  soul  may  pass  in  a  man's  shape,  or  a 
woman's,  or  reach  out  and  touch  us  from  a 
printed  page ;  but  when  it  is  encountered  if 
we  be  not  dead  of  convention  or  respecta- 
bility we  are  in  that  moment  born  again. 

Thenceforward  we  know  that  our  peace 
can  be  won  only  by  that  soul's  approbation, 
even  if  it  be  gone  from  its  earthly  body.  If 
we  do  not  strive  for  it  the  black  dog  haunts 
us  and  visits  derisive  yelpings  upon  the  things 
we  gain.  The  applause  of  the  multitude  then 
wells  up  not  to  sustain  but  to  stifle. 

Then  it  is  that  The  Heroic  beckons. 
"Hero  phrases ,  hero  actions.  Always  ready  to 
stick  our  hands  into  the  fire,  always  ready  to 
throw  ourselves  away." 

But  the  calm  eyes  turn  from  our  petty  blus- 
ter ;  unblaming,  unpraising,  they  turn  away. 
Far  down  in  the  darkness  the  black  dog  is 
still  barking.  We  are  not  yet ;  we  may  have 
cleared  the  ground  of  weeds,  but  the  crust 
is  hard,  the  soil  is  yet  to  turn. 

To  be  is  to  become  ;  being  is  a  process,  it 
is  not  a  completed  fact. 

92 


The  hero 

The  soul  is  not  a  mushroom. 

That  calm  look  in  the  eyes  is  not  born  of  a 
single  night  nor  of  a  single  act,  and  to  act  be- 
fore that  look  is  gained  is  often  but  to  act  the 
fool. 

Heroism  is  still  and  calm  ;  it  stands  some- 
times in  the  shadow  of  the  wall,  alone,  while 
the  multitude  surges  by  in  acclamation  of  The 
Little.  When  true  heroism  acts  the  act  is  a 
consequence  ;  the  logic  of  the  universe  speaks 
in  it.  It  springs  out  of  soul  poise,  not  out  of 
the  hurrying  moments  of  uncertainty. 

Soul  poise  is  life  wisdom  ;  it  is  of  more  than 
a  season's  planting.  It  does  not  put  out  its 
shoots  until  the  chilling  snows  of  selfishness 
and  vanity  and  the  tyranny  of  things  have  been 
forever  melted  by  the  sun  of  a  great  love  for 
humanity. 

Life  wisdom  is  the  realization  that  life  is 
one. 

That  calm  look  will  come  into  our  eyes 
someday,  if  we  will  it  so  ;  and  when  it  comes 
it  will  be  its  own  proof  of  our  conquering. 
To  those  who  can  understand  it  will  be  the 
unfailing  sign  that  through  the  long  dark 
night  of  life  experience,  far  from  the  world's 
dull  ken  we  have  been  patiently,  silently, 

93 


Forgings  of  the  new 

steadily  scaling  the  baffling  ramparts  of  Self, 
and  may  even  yet  plant  the  standards  of  vic- 
tory against  the  soul's  sunrise.  For  victory 
comes  of  Truth,  and  that  calm  look  sees 
things  as  they  are,  sees  men  as  they  are  ;  it  is 
not  disconcerted  by  things,  nor  the  clashing 
of  cymbals,  nor  the  shouts  of  the  mock-he- 
roic. 

Beneath  the  measureless  confusion  and  the 
chaos  of  the  world's  great  strife  it  notes  the 
infallible  under-weave  connecting  man  and  ev- 
ents, and  it  understands  the  eternal  mystic 
sympathy  between  Nature  and  her  wayward 
children  ;  it  knows  that  a  greater  victory  may 
be  won  in  watching  the  growing  grass,  than 
in  the  storming  of  a  walled  city. 


94 


THE  PHILANTHROPIST 

"  Hobson :  Have  you  a  dollar  about  you,  Dobson  ? 
I  want  to  give  it  to  that  poor  beggar. 
"  Dobson  ( handing  him  the  dollar ) :  Your  generos- 
ity will  get  you  into  trouble  some  day,  Hobson." 

—Life. 

Has  it  ever  occurred  to  you  that  the  great 
philanthropists  of  the  world  have  acquired 
their  claim  to  that  title  by  giving  away  other 
people's  money  ? 

Here  is  a  millionaire. 

You  hear  people  say  he  is  worth  a  million 
dollars.  Don't  believe  it.  No  one  would 
give  a  million  dollars  for  him.  The  people 
mean  he  has  a  million  dollars. 

How  did  he  come  by  it  ?  Can  one  man 
earn  a  million  dollars  ? 

Yes,  if  he  works  every  day  in  the  year, 
week-days  and  Sundays,  at  ten  dollars  a  day 
for  nearly  three  hundred  years  and  never 
spends  a  cent  of  it  to  live,  he  can.  It  takes  a 
strong  man  to  do  it. 

There  is  scarcely  a  productive  occupation 
in  the  world  at  present  at  which  a  man  can 
earn  more  than  ten  dollars  a  day. 

It  is  not  as  producers  but  as  exploiters 
that  men  receive  a  larger  daily  wage  than  this. 

95 


Forgings  of  the  new 

If  you  possess  some  legal  privilege,  or  if 
your  talent  for  organization  is  so  pronounced 
as  to  enable  you  to  exploit  a  large  number  of 
men  to  advantage,  then  you  may  finally  be- 
come a  millionaire. 

One  thousand  workmen  each  earning  five 
dollars  a  day  and  getting  two  dollars  a  day, 
the  unpaid  three  dollars  remaining  with  you, 
may,  after  your  business  gets  to  running, 
make  you  a  million  in  two  or  three  years. 

But  you  will  not  have  earned  the  million. 

Other  men  will  have  earned  it  and  you  will 
have  taken  it  from  them. 

Once  you  get  the  business  well  organized 
you  can  go  off  and  leave  it.  You  can  hire 
men  of  executive  ability  to  keep  it  running 
while  you  travel  or  indulge  in  yacht-racing  ; 
particularly  if  you  have  a  legal  monopoly.  If 
you  have  not,  you  will  have  to  stay  around 
more  or  less.  But  you  will  be  getting  your 
hundreds  of  thousands  a  year, — while  you 
are  idle.  This  makes  it  clear  that  you  are 
not  earning  it.  The  other  men,  the  working 
men,  are  earning  it. 

You  have  used  the  ability  Nature  has  be- 
stowed upon  you  for  helping  other  men,  to 
take  advantage  of  other  men. 


The  philanthropist 

What  was  intended  as  a  race  obligation, 
your  small  soul  construes  a  personal  privilege. 

While  these  hundreds  of  thousands  are 
coming  in  every  year,  you  may  occasionally 
give  some  of  them  to  a  library  or  a  college. 

But  it  is  not  your  money  you  are  giving. 

It  is  no  denial  nor  sacrifice  of  yours. 

It  is  other  men  who  are  earning  it. 

You  are  taking  other  people's  money  and 
giving  it  away  for  the  sake  of  your  private 
reputation. 

You  are  called  a  charitable  person. 

But  you  yourself  know  yourself. 

Charity  is  service. 

You  can  give  only  yourself  in  loving  ser- 
vice to  your  kind  ;  or  give  the  results  of  your 
own  personal  toil. 

That  is  charity. 

It  is  not  charity  for  you  to  give  away  that 
which  other  men  earn. 

If  you  were  a  charitable  man  you  would 
wish  to  use  your  same  organizing  ability  for 
the  good  of  all,  instead  of  for  yourself  alone. 
You  would  wish  to  be  a  real  philanthropist 
instead  of  a  sham  philanthropist. 

You  would  wish  to  give  to  the  world,  not 
to  take  from  it.  This  is  real  philanthropy. 

97 


Forgings  of  the  new 

We  cannot  see  this  very  plainly  now,  be- 
cause our  training  has  obscured  our  vision. 

We  think  our  share  means  all  that  we  can 
get,  and  when  we  have  grabbed  it  we  try  to 
steal  a  virtue  by  giving  back  the  portion  we 
don't  want. 

But  purity  of  soul  has  gone  from  us  in  the 
grabbing.  In  plunging  for  a  diamond  we 
have  lost  a  star. 

There  is  a  psychological  significance  in  the 
phrase,  "  He  is  worth  a  million." 

It  indicates  diseased  judgment. 

We  have  come  to  assume  that  the  man 
who  takes  the  most  is  worth  the  most. 

We  commonly  look  upon  the  richest  man 
in  a  town  as  logically  of  the  greatest  value  to 
the  town. 

He  may  have  established  an  industry. 

The  industry  may  have  increased  the  pop- 
ulation. 

But  mere  bigness  is  not  virtue. 

Unless  the  efforts  of  a  man  make  the  peo- 
ple of  a  town  a  happier  people  he  has  done 
them  no  service  in  enlarging  it.  He  may 
have  increased  their  burdens. 

The  happiest  cities  are  usually  the  smallest 
cities. 

98 


The  philanthropist 

Chicago's  human  misery  is  unutterable. 

The  "men  who  made  Chicago"  have,  for 
the  most,  only  made  the  distance  from  the 
home  to  the  workshop  or  office  a  little  great- 
er. They  have  only  added  a  weary  tramp 
or  a  dreary  hour  in  a  crowded  car  to  the  day's 
toil. 

They  have  neither  lightened  human  toil 
nor  lessened  human  misery. 

Some  day  we  will  come  to  see  how  the 
philanthropist  is  made,  and  we  will  recognize 
his  real  value  to  society. 

Then  there  will  be  no  philanthropists. 

Every  man  will  be  his  own  philanthropist. 

Instead  of  permitting  another  to  spend 
their  earnings  for  them,  men  will  spend 
them  for  themselves. 

Then  if  they  had  rather  have  a  bucket  of 
coal  or  a  pair  of  shoes  than  a  university  or  an 
art  gallery,  they  can  have  it. 

When  growing  spiritual  discernment  final- 
ly shows  men  that  a  millionaire  is  and  must 
be  a  man  who  makes  grist  of  other  men's 
lives,  men  will  not  wish  to  be  millionaires. 

And  they  cannot  be  if  they  would  be. 

The  extra  three  dollars  will  that  day  remain 
in  the  pocket  of  the  earner. 

99 


Forgings  of  the  new 

In  that  day  either  to  keep  or  to  bestow  the 
earnings  of  other  men  will  be  seen  for  what 
it  is,  and  what  it  has  always  been,  a  moral 
leprosy  born  of  the  vanishing  dark. 

In  that  day  to  grow  a  flower  for  a  little 
crippled  child  will  in  men's  eyes  exalt  you 
higher  than  to  build  a  university. 


100 


THE  FLOWERS  OF  A  GRANT 
OF  LAND 

w  To  whomsoever  the  soil  at  any  time  belongs,  to 
him  belong  the  fruits  of  it.  White  parasols  and 
elephants  mad  with  pride  are  the  flowers  of  a  grant 
of  land." — Sir  William  Jones'  translation  of  an  old 
Indian  grant  of  land,  found  at  Tanna. 

In  India  there  are  300,000,000  people. 

The  great  native  states  of  Indore,  Gwalior, 
Hyderabad,  Travancore  and  Mysore,  aggre- 
gating 50,000,000  people,  govern  themselves, 
under  light  British  supervision. 

The  rest  of  the  territory,  with  its  popula- 
tion of  250,000,000  souls,  is  governed  by  the 
English  capitalists. 

The  self-governing  states  are  surrounded 
by  the  British  territory.  Their  drawbacks  of 
climate  are  identical. 

Yet  the  self-governing  states  are  flourishing 
and  prosperous. 

In  the  British-governed  states  the  people 
die  off  like  rats  :  —  starved  into  skeletons. 

The  Indian  peoples,  who  had  a  literature 
and  an  art  and  an  architecture  while  our  an- 
cestors were  half-naked  savages  gnawing  raw 
flesh,  no  longer  own  their  own  country. 

Their  land  is  no  longer  theirs. 

101 


Forgings  of  the  new 

They  sow  it,  and  till  it,  and  reap  it ;  but 
the  harvest  is  taken  from  them. 

Every  year  the  English  capitalists,  through 
their  plundering  organization  called  the  Brit- 
ish government,  extort  from  India  over  $150,- 
000,000  in  gold  value. 

What  do  the  Indian  people  get  in  return 
for  this  ? 

White  parasols  and  elephants  mad  with 
pride ;  English  soldiers  to  feed ;  and  Secre- 
taries and  Viceroys  in  gold  lace  and  jewel- 
hiked  swords  ;  and  pestilence  and  famine. 

Every  week,  while  the  ryots  of  India  are 
dying  of  sheer  starvation,  the  wheat  ships  are 
clearing  from  the  ports  of  Calcutta  and  Bom- 
bay. 

The  food  the  ryots  have  grown  is  taken 
from  them. 

The  wheat  ships  are  sailing  for  England, 
— to  make  bread  for  the  English  people. 

England  is  a  civilized  country. 

The  ryots  do  not  understand  it  all.  They 
do  not  know  what  civilization  is.  They  sim- 
ply know  that  if  they  do  not  till  the  soil  they 
die. 

If  they  do  till  the  soil  they  must  give  up  the 
fruits  of  it.  For  there  are  the  English  guns. 

102 


The  flowers  of  a  grant  of  land 

When  five  or  six  millions  of  the  Indian 
people  starve  to  death  in  a  single  year  it 
occasions  remark  ;  —  "  famine  years  ",  such 
years  are  called. 

When  one  or  two  millions  die  it  is  an  ordi- 
nary year.  No  one  pays  much  attention. 

In  "famine"  years  the  English  herd  the 
starving  people  together  by  the  hundred  thou- 
sands in  what  are  called  "relief  works." 

This  is  where  the  ryots  get  the  food  bought 
by  the  pennies  of  the  American  Sunday-school 
children. 

If  the  American  Sunday-school  children's 
donation  happens  to  be  a  trifle  shy,  the  Eng- 
lish hold  back  one  or  two  of  the  wheat  ships 
and  allow  the  ryots  to  eat  a  little  of  their  own 
grain. 

This  is  not  to  save  the  lives  of  the  ryots. 

It  is  to  save  the  lives  of  the  English. 

If  the  ryots  get  to  dying  faster  than  they 
can  be  buried,  pestilence  breaks  out.  The 
English  people  do  not  like  that.  English 
children  die  of  it. 

The  sanitary  arrangements  for  herding  peo- 
ple together  by  the  hundred  thousand  are  nev- 
er very  good.  Plague  and  cholera  invariably 
appear. 

103 


Forgings  of  the  new 

Most  of  the  ryots  prefer  to  perish  misera- 
bly in  their  own  little  huts. 

This  is  better  ;  the  vultures  pick  their  bones 
speedily  and  there  is  an  end.  No  one's  sym- 
pathies need  be  taxed. 

No  one  hears  the  cries  of  the  famished 
babes, — save  the  Indian  mother. 

They  suck  the  dry  breasts  and  wither  and 
die  in  their  mothers'  arms. 

It  would  be  pitiful  if  the  women  were  hu- 
man ;  — that  is  to  say,  English. 

There  is  enough  wheat  grown  in  India  to 
feed  the  people  of  India.  The  prosperity  of 
the  native-governed  states  proves  it. 

Their  resources  are  identical  with  those  of 
the  British-governed  states. 

The  difference  is  this :  in  the  native-gov- 
erned states  they  eat  the  wheat  they  grow ; 
in  the  British-governed  states  the  English  eat 
it.  The  English  take  it  in  taxation. 

In  years  of  drought  the  taxes  are  the  same 
as  in  years  of  plenty.  In  years  of  good  crops 
the  ryots  can  just  barely  pay  their  taxes  and 
live  until  the  next  season.  If  the  next  sea- 
son there  is  a  drought,  that  settles  them  ;  they 
have  saved  up  nothing  and  they  die.  The 
English  must  have  their  taxes. 

104 


The  flowers  of  a  grant  of  land 

In  Mysore  and  the  other  native-governed 
states  they  fill  the  granaries  in  good  seasons 
to  feed  over  the  years  of  drought. 

In  the  English-governed  states  the  English 
take  it  all. 

When  the  year  of  drought  comes  the  ryots 
in  the  British  states  are  destitute.  They  die 
like  flies. 

These  are  the  years  in  which  the  missionary 
journals  appeal  for  help.  It  quickens  the 
imagination  to  see  pictures  of  vast  multitudes 
starving. 

Good  people  go  about  the  churches  telling 
how  terrible  it  is.  They  get  a  living  by  it 

They  say  the  awful  drought  does  it.  They 
don't  seem  to  notice  the  awful  English. 

If  goodness  is  blindness,  they  are  very 
good  people, — very  good  indeed. 

They  do  not  understand  taxation.  About 
one  man  in  ten  thousand  does. 

Taxation  is  the  strongest  weapon  of  capi- 
talism. Also  the  subtlest. 

It  strikes  quietly,  in  the  dark ;  while  men 
are  thinking  of  something  else. 

But  in  India  it  is  plain  enough. 

For  fear  lest  the  hunger  -  stricken  ryots 
should  eat  their  crops  before  paying  what 

105 


Forgings  of  the  new 

they  "  owe/'  the  English  extort  the  payment 
of  the  excessive  taxes,  in  cash,  before  the 
crops  are  grown ! 

This  drives  the  cultivators  into  the  hands 
of  the  local  capitalists, — the  native  money- 
lenders. The  money-lenders  advance  the 
cash  at  about  60  per  cent,  and  take  a  mort- 
gage on  the  crops. 

The  ryot  takes  the  risk. 

It  is  a  great  system. 

Without  it  British  India  would  go  bank- 
rupt tomorrow.  She  could  not  support  the 
vast  horde  of  English  parasites  which  has 
been  fastened  on  her. 

By  owning  India  the  English  can  suck  her 
dry. 

To  whomsoever  at  any  time  the  soil  be- 
longs, to  him  belong  the  fruits  of  it. 

In  India  men  and  cattle  must  have  salt. 

If  men  and  women  do  not  eat  as  much 
salt  as  they  ought  to  eat  they  contract  loath- 
some diseases. 

If  the  cattle  don't  get  enough  of  it  they  per- 
ish, and  that  settles  the  tillage.  The  bullocks 
do  the  plowing. 

The  English  tax  the  salt  as  a  government 
monopoly  1,000  per  cent  on  its  value ! 

106 


The  flowers  of  a  grant  of  land 

One  thousand  per  cent ;  that  is  a  good  tax. 

Of  course  the  ryots  use  as  little  salt  as  they 
can ;  but  one  never  can  be  quite  sure  of  the 
danger-line. 

In  "  famine  "  years  human  beings  are  more 
important  than  cattle.  The  ryots  then  buy 
food  for  the  babies  instead  of  salt  for  the 
cattle.  The  bullocks  die.  Then  the  next 
year  there  are  but  few  bullocks  to  plow  with. 

The  ryots  are  between  the  devil  and  the 
deep  sea. 

The  clergy  of  the  English  churches  offer 
prayers  to  God  for  the  welfare  of  "  His 
Majesty's  subjects  in  India." 

The  salt  tax  helps  to  keep  the  church  go- 
ing. 

The  ryots  might  thrive  better  on  the  salt 
than  on  the  prayers. 

But  the  priests  wouldn't. 

England's  zeal  in  Christianizing  India  is 
bringing  flattering  results. 

A  study  of  official  statistics  for  the  century 
just  ended  shows : 

From  1825  to  1850  there  were  two  famines 
and  500,000  deaths  from  famine. 

From  1850  to  1875  there  were  six  famines 
and  5,000,000  deaths  from  famine. 

107 


Forgings  of  the  new 

From  1875  to  1900  there  were  eighteen 
famines  and  26,000,000  deaths  from  famine. 

Quite  an  interesting  progression  ! 

Within  the  ten  years  from  1891  to  1900, 
nineteen  millions  died  of  starvation, — nearly 
four  times  as  many  as  the  war-deaths  of  the 
world  for  the  entire  century. 

William  Digby,  in  a  book  published  in 
1901  ( «  Prosperous  "  British  India ;  a  Rev- 
elation from  Official  Records.  London.  T. 
Fisher  Unwin),  says  that  in  the  absence  of 
special  seasons  of  famine  there  are  70,000,000 
hungry  people  in  the  country;  —  about  the 
population  of  the  United  States. 

As  the  English  from  year  to  year  during 
the  past  century  have  gradually  obtained  com- 
plete control  over  India,  saddling  more  and 
more  of  parasitical  unproductive  officialdom 
upon  her,  taking  more  and  more  of  her 
product  away  every  year  to  England ;  they 
have,  at  the  same  time,  by  salt  taxes  and  other 
similar  exactions,  exterminated  her  cattle  and 
otherwise  reduced  the  productive  resources 
of  the  ryots,  until  famine  has  now  become  a 
chronic  state  from  which  so  long  as  the  En- 
glish are  in  India  no  number  of  favorable 
seasons  can  extricate  her. 
loe 


The  flowers  of  a  grant  of  land 

It  should  be  remembered  that  during  this 
same  century  the  native-governed  states  be- 
fore mentioned,  having  the  same  climate  and 
similar  soil,  have  been  uniformly  prosperous 
and  flourishing,  only  suffering  slightly  when 
two  seasons  of  severe  drought  came  consecu- 
tively. 

Twenty -six  million  lives  in  twenty -five 
years :  this  is  England's  record  at  the  close 
of  nineteen  hundred  years  of  what  she  calls 
Christianity. 

In  India  twenty-three  years  is  the  average 
of  life :  in  Great  Britain  it  is  forty. 

"  India  must  be  bled,"  playfully  said  Lord 
Salisbury. 

India  is  a  long  way  off. 

Blood  spilled  in  India  does  not  bespatter 
English  teacups. 

No  such  awful  crime  has  ever  been  com- 
mitted in  the  history  of  the  human  race  as 
that  which  England  is  committing  in  India. 

Multiply  English  crime  in  South  Africa  a 
thousand  times,  it  yet  pales  before  the  peren- 
nial, incalculable  infamy  of  India. 

Lord  Curzon,  Viceroy,  and  Lord  George 
Hamilton,  Secretary,  assert  that  India  is  pros- 
perous. She  is, — for  the  English  leech. 

109 


Forgings  of  the  new 

The  official  returns  for  1898-1899,  (the 
latest  available ! )  show  government  salaries 
of  $52,440,000  paid  by  British  India. 

This  is  equivalent  to  paying  every  resident 
of  a  city  of  52,440  inhabitants  one  thousand 
dollars  a  year. 

"  Where  there  is  one  idle  man,"  says  Tol- 
stoy, "there  is  always  another  somewhere 
who  is  starving." 

After  the  English  officials  finish  their  years 
of  "  service  "  in  India  they  go  home  to  loaf 
the  rest  of  their  lives  on  a  pension, — also 
paid  by  India. 

Forty-five  or  fifty  is  the  "  retiring  "  age. 

The  starving  ryots  of  India  are  to-day 
yielding  up  their  product  to  support  eleven 
hundred  retired  Colonels  in  England,  who  di- 
vide among  themselves  $5,000,000'  a  year  in 
pensions. 

Most  of  these  Colonels  "  have  seen  active 
service  "  in  India ;  that  is  to  say,  they  are  the 
men  who  helped  to  murder  all  the  Indian 
people  who  dared  to  fight,  trying  to  keep 
their  own  land  for  themselves. 

When  Lord  George  Hamilton  says  that 
British  India  is  thriving,  he  means  the  English 
quarters  of  British  India. 
110 


The  flowers  of  a  grant  of  land 

The  ordinary  traveler  who  runs  through 
India  does  not  see  the  squalor  and  misery 
that  fester  under  the  near  horizon. 

Anglo-stan  is  fat: — bloated  from  the  blood- 
sucking of  the  vast  empire. 

#/W#-stan  rattles  her  dry  bones  in  her  dry 
skin  a  few  miles  beyond  the  railroad. 

On  the  one  hand  white  parasols  and  ele- 
phants mad  with  pride  ;  on  the  other  the  dy- 
ing gasps  of  those  who  are  paying  for  it  all. 


Ill 


IMAGINATION 

w  I  saw  that  corpses  might  be  multiplied,  as  on  the 
field  of  battle,  till  they  no  longer  affected  us  in  any 
degree  as  exceptions  to  the  common  lot  of  humanity. 
If  I  had  found  one  body  cast  upon  the  beach  in 
some  lonely  place  it  would  have  affected  me  more." 
— H.  D.  Thoreau  :  The  Shipwreck. 

Why  is  it  that  it  is  so  difficult  for  us  to  con- 
template things  in  their  proportion  ?  It  is  so 
seldom  other  than  the  individual  who  either 
excites  sympathy  or  calls  down  anathema. 

If  a  man  steals  a  loaf  of  bread  he  is  promptly 
and  summarily  imprisoned :  if  he  steals  a 
railroad  the  people  meet  him  at  the  station 
with  a  band  and  flying  colors. 

You  can  be  a  scoundrel  if  you  will  only  be 
a  big  scoundrel — and  succeed  at  it. 

There  is  something  about  bigness  which 
oppresses  the  imagination  and  distorts  the 
basis  of  judgment. 

Great  truths  are  elusive ;  this  is  why  they 
are  so  easily  obscured. 

If  a  man  kills  another  with  a  pistol  the 
world  is  horrified  and  puts  him  to  death ;  if 
he  kills  ten  thousand  with  a  piece  of  parch- 
ment he  is  hailed  as  a  financier  and  becomes 
the  patron  of  a  church. 
112 


Imagination 

Imagination  is  an  exceptional  quality. 

Most  of  us  have  only  senses  and  passions ; 
objective  things,  only,  impress  us, — and  even 
these  must  be  unique  or  unusual. 

We  are  as  indifferent  to  the  crimes  of  a 
system  of  which  we  are  a  part,  as  we  are  to 
the  glories  and  wonders  of  a  familiar  uni- 
verse. 

We  look  at  the  sunshine  unmoved;  but 
let  there  be  an  eclipse  and  we  run  hither  and 
thither  with  smoked  glass  as  if  there  were 
something  important  toward.  Yet  to  the 
imagination  the  sunshine  is  more  wonderful 
than  the  passing  of  two  bodies  in  space. 

Discontent  is  called  the  mother  of  progress, 
but  progress  does  not  spring  from  discontent; 
mere  reaction  springs  from  discontent.  Dis- 
content serves  only  as  the  sombre  background 
upon  which  the  imagination  flashes  its  ideal. 

Progress  rises  through  illumination  :  the 
imagination  is  the  real  lever  of  advance. 

Jules  Verne  paints  a  ship  swinging  down 
amid  the  quiet  foliage  of  the  deep  sea.  Then 
comes  the  inventor — the  mechanic  lit  by  Jules 
Verne's  flame, —  and  the  Nautilus  becomes 
a  submarine  reality.  Again,  he  sees  in  his 
mind's  eye  a  moon-voyage  ;  and  Santos  Du- 
ns 


Forgings  of  the  new 

mont  sails  round  the  Eiffel  tower.  The 
imagination  speaks  the  doom-word  of  effete 
civilization  when  it  lifts  into  view  the  vision 
of  the  better  day. 

We  will  never  realize  a  better  order  of  so- 
ciety until  our  imagination  is  kindled  by  the 
vision  of  it. 

"  Let  well  enough  alone  "  ;  that  is  the  creed 
of  the  unimaginative,  and  he  it  is  whose  dull, 
deadening  incubus  has  made  the  world's  tyr- 
anny of  such  long  life.  It  is  he  who,  when 
his  front  door  is.  closed,  believes  that  the 
whole  world  is  warm  ;  it  is  he  who,  when  his 
own  trencher  is  full  of  meat,  can  see  no  vision 
of  a  hungry  man. 

With  what  grace  or  satisfaction  might  a 
dinner  party  of  the  smart  set  eat  its  terrapin 
and  its  truffles  at  the  Waldorf  while  a  row  of 
hungry  men  and  women  from  the  East  side 
stood  with  gaunt  looks  ranged  along  the  wall  ? 

Just  what  emotions  would  an  analysis  of 
their  feelings  disclose  ? 

But  what  matters  it  if  the  row  of  hungry 
ones  be  inside  or  outside,  so  long  as  they  be 
anywhere  ? 

Ah,  outside  they  cannot  be  a  rebuke  to  the 
senses  or  passions ;  the  eye  cannot  reach 
114 


Imagination 

them  there,  and  the  dull  mind  sees  them  not. 
When  the  hungry  ones  are  invisible ;  when 
they  are  back  in  their  East  side  kennels  and 
there  hang  only  the  tapestries  of  the  banquet 
room  where  loomed  the  accusing  spectres, 
then  he  with  the  imagination,  alone,  can  see 
them.  He  with  the  imagination  sees  the 
spectres  still,  shaming  him  from  the  sheen  of 
the  shaded  lights,  and  his  food  dries  in  his 
throat  and  chokes  him. 

Imagination  ;  torch  of  celestial  fire  ! 

If  you  have  it  at  the  flood  you  must  be- 
come an  artist ;  —  or  you  must  become  the 
only  other  alternative — a  revolutionist. 

If  your  intellect  outweighs  your  heart  you 
may  become  a  painter,  a  poet,  or  a  musician ; 
but  if  your  greatness  of  mind  is  at  equipoise 
with  your  greatness  of  heart  and  your  imag- 
ination is  at  the  flood  ;  then  you  will  do 
naught  but  illumine  the  future  to  the  people. 

Mazzini  was  an  artist  soul,  a  poet  and  a 
musician  ;  but  his  great  heart  drew  him  away 
from  those  esthetic,  beautiful,  selfish  avenues 
of  creation.  He  could  not  write  music  while 
his  fellows  were  breaking  on  the  wheel  of 
tyranny,  so  he  turned  the  strong  flame  of  his 
great  manhood  to  sear  away  the  hideous  in- 

115 


Forgings  of  the  new 

stitutions  which  manacled  Italy  on  her  knees 
in  darkness. 

One  man,  strive  how  he  may,  can  hope  in 
his  life  to  do  but  little.  Judged  by  the  things 
he  does,  it  is  a  petty  strife,  late  begun  and 
ended  all  too  soon. 

But  he  who  treasures  this  divinest  spark, 
imagination ;  this  greatest  gift  of  the  gods ; 
who  fans  it  into  the  flame  it  ought  to  be,  can 
fire  the  torch  in  the  souls  of  other  men,  turn- 
ing their  lives  into  radiance,  as  a  sulphur 
match  may  start  a  forest  fire. 

Thus  the  divinest  thing  in  us  lives  on  in 
other  lives,  in  ever-widening  circles  ever  pro- 
ducing its  kind ;  ever  moving  the  race  on- 
ward ;  "  onward  and  upward  ;  upward  toward 
the  peaks,  and  toward  the  Great  Silence." 

"  Beginnings  are  alike :  it  is  the  ends  which  differ. 
One  drop  falls,  lasts,  and  dries  up — but  a  drop  ; 
Another  begins  a  river :  and  one  thought 
Settles  a  life,  an  immortality." 


116 


THE  LONG  PROCESSION 

"  How  can  one  help  loving  this  people !  Must  not 
the  one  who  has  stood  by  the  roadside  and  watched 
them  pass  feel  the  tears  in  his  eyes  when  he  recalls 
them — men  with  sharp  features  and  hard  hands, 
women  with  early  lined  foreheads,  and  the  tired 
little  children?" 

— Selma  Lagerlof . 

It  is  sad,  sad  reading,  this  struggle  of  the 
working  class  to  lift  its  head  above  the  mire. 

Men  with  sharp  features  and  hard  hands, 
women  with  early  lined  foreheads,  and  tired 
little  children  ;  see  the  long  procession  ! 

Far,  far  has  this  long  procession  marched, 
far  has  it  marched  in  vain. 

Since  the  days  of  feudalism,  since  the  days 
when  private  ownership  of  the  sources  of  life 
turned  humanity  upon  the  highway  to  starve 
or  to  sell  itself  for  wages,  the  working  class 
has  been  seeking  a  liberator. 

It  has  held  out  its  worn  hands  of  hope, 
first  to  this  one,  then  to  that,  believing  that 
the  high-sounding  phrases  echoing  in  its  ears 
were  inspired  by  a  love  for  the  lowliest,  as 
they  always  pretended  to  be. 

Oh,  poor,  tired  brother !  Greatly  thou 
hast  trusted,  and  most  basely  hast  thou  been 

117 


Forgings  of  the  new 

deceived.  Thou  hast  fought  the  battles  of 
the  liberator,  but  thou  hast  not  found  libera- 
tion. The  Cromwells  have  succeeded  ;  the 
John  Balls  have  died  the  death. 

Working-class  revolutions  have  never  found 
the  doorstep  of  liberty ;  they  have  builded 
the  highroad  in  the  sweat  of  their  faces  and 
the  blood  of  their  hearts,  but  they  have  not 
traveled  thereupon  to  the  land  of  heart's  de- 
sire. 

Others  have  gleaned  of  their  sweat ;  others 
have  voyaged  in  the  stream  of  their  blood. 
All  of  their  brave  battles  for  the  Fatherland 
have  but  riveted  anew  their  shackles.  Quick 
to  respond  in  their  simplicity  of  heart  to  roll 
of  drum,  the  flag  of  victory  has  bestowed 
ever  but  a  crutch  or  an  age  of  toil.  They 
build  and  they  build,  and  they  enter  not  in. 

Today,  as  in  the  Nazarene's  day,  the  work- 
er's lot  crushes  hope  and  stifles  aspiration. 
He  may  look  at  an  art  gallery,  perhaps,  in 
place  of  a  barren  rock ;  but  he  is  driven  by 
the  same  fear,  and  his  dinner  table  still  stands 
at  the  deadline  of  mere  subsistence. 

Civilization  has  brought  him  everything 
except  liberty,  without  which  all  the  splen- 
dors of  the  world's  achievement  are  but  bar- 
ns 


The  long  procession 

ren  nothings.  The  wireless  telegraph  is  no 
food  for  crying  babes  to  live  on.  Where  the 
base  of  the  social  structure  is  awry,  poverty 
is  the  running  mate  of  progress  ;  every  labor 
saving  machine  means  only  that  more  people 
shall  go  hungry. 

The  world  has  always  looked  with  compla- 
cency upon  a  class  ordained  to  do  the  drudg- 
ery, and  the  glorified  national  liberators  in  the 
world's  history  have  always  taken  this  class 
for  granted.  National  liberation  has  always 
been  capitalistic  liberation  ;  it  has  never  once 
reached  down  to  the  working  class.  The  real 
liberators,  those  who  stood  not  for  national 
liberty,  but  for  universal  liberty,  have  died 
ignominious  deaths. 

To  the  working  class  national  independence 
has  so  far  meant  only  that  they  should  be  ex- 
ploited by  the  capitalists  of  their  own  country 
— called  "their  own"  country  for  the  pur- 
pose of  advised  self-deception. 

It  is  natural  for  a  man  to  fight  for  his  own. 
But  to  fight  for  phantasms  of  things  ;  to  fight 
battles  in  which  one  has  only  a  fancied  inter- 
est ;  this  is  only  possible  to  the  deceived. 

The  working  class  has  been  eternally  de- 
ceived by  the  idea  that  it  has  a  country,  where- 

119 


Forgings  of  the  new 

as  it  has  been  as  homeless  as  the  prairie  wolf. 
The  world  is  the  country  of  the  working  class, 
and  it  will  some  day  come  into  full  possession. 
It  will  come  into  possession  when  it  sees  the 
motive  for  arbitrary  geographical  and  political 
divisions  and  abolishes  the  conditions  which 
make  these  divisions  profitable  to  the  few. 

Capitalism,  working  through  sentiment, 
maintains  arbitrary  divisions  of  people  by 
fostering  the  idea  of  nationality,  and  the  idea 
of  the  natural  opposition  of  national  interests. 
The  "  protective  "  tariff  is  a  species  of  silent 
murder ;  it  enables  local  capitalists  to  pick 
the  pockets  of  the  working  class  by  centering 
their  attention  upon  absurd  national  hatreds. 
Capitalism  can  prevent  me  from  exchanging 
things  with  my  neighbor  to  our  mutual  ad- 
vantage only  by  making  me  think  my  neigh- 
bor is  my  natural  enemy. 

Exploiting  capitalists — called  by  courtesy 
"  the  commercial  classes  " — are  the  ones  who 
precipitate  war,  and  who  sometimes  cover  up 
their  economic  plundering  by  effusive  dem- 
onstrations of  their  regard.  The  Czar  of 
Russia  visits  France,  and  the  President  of 
the  French  Republic  visits  the  Czar:  they 
weep  on  one  another's  shoulders. 

120 


The  long  procession 

When  there  are  peaceful  functions  going 
forward,  the  potentates  dress  up  and  wine 
and  dine  and  caress  one  another ; — and  make 
very  dull  and  uninteresting  speeches.  This 
is  the  dress  parade  of  capitalism.  Royalty 
is  its  puppet. 

When  however  the  exploiting  classes  of 
the  different  political  divisions  called  nations 
come  into  collision  over  a  division  of  the  pro- 
duct of  the  working  classes,  and  war  becomes 
menacing,  then  these  interesting  personages 
miraculously  disappear.  It  is  then  time  for 
the  working  classes  to  come  on  the  stage  and 
do  the  fighting.  For  a  fancied  "country" 
the  poor,  deluded  workers  of  one,  go  to  fight 
the  poor,  deluded  workers  of  the  other  poli- 
tical division.  All  wars  are  fought  by  the 
common  people, — by  the  people  who  have 
nothing  to  gain  by  war.  Your  capitalist  is 
your  true  "  patriot."  He  has  something  to 
fight  for.  The  soldier  is  only  a  dupe. 

It  is  fine  to  have  all  your  fighting  done  for 
you  by  the  very  people  who  support  you  dur- 
ing peace. 

The  workingman  is  the  true   philanthro- 
pist ;  it  is  too  bad  he  is  such  from  necessity, 
through  ignorance. 

121 


Forgings  of  the  new 

We  must  be  trained  in  the  hatred  of  the 
"foreigner/'  for  without  an  occasional  war, 
capitalism  could  not  live.  The  throne  of 
capitalism  is  "  patriotism,"  and  war  lays  and 
maintains  its  foundation. 

All  ancient  literature,  and  the  great  bulk  of 
modern  literature,  unconsciously  accentuates 
the  principle  (or  lack  of  it)  that  the  interests 
of  nations  are  antagonistic.  This  makes  pa- 
triotism consist,  not  so  much  in  the  love  of 
yourself  and  your  own,  as  in  the  hatred  of 
your  neighbor. 

This  quiet,  persistent,  false  educational 
force  operates  continuously  from  childhood 
to  age,  and  forges  the  "  national  spirit "  of  a 
country.  It  is  expressed  in  the  common 
mental  attitudes  of  the  plain  people,  and  ren- 
ders them  pliable  to  flag  raising. 

The  capitalist  is  somewhat  more  emanci- 
pated. His  country  is  wherever  his  invest- 
ments are.  But  he  sees  the  value  of  incul- 
cating patriotism  in  the  plain  people,  and  may 
always  be  counted  upon  to  say  the  right  word 
at  the  right  time. 

When  the  commercial  classes  of  two  na- 
tions clash,  the  newspapers  blaze  with  manu- 
factured indignation,  rousing  the  latent  fire 
122 


The  long  procession 

long  kindled  by  customary  opinion,  until  the 
poor,  common  hind  believes  the  honor  of  his 
country  rests  upon  his  shoulders.  The  poor 
and  v/retched  of  the  other  country,  subjected 
to  the  same  education,  believe  the  same  thing. 
The  peasants  and  the  artisans  of  both  na- 
tions forsake  their  plows  and  tools  and  go  and 
shoot  one  another  ;  not  because  they  hate  one 
another,  but  because  they  have  been  trained 
to  believe  that  "their"  country  must  be  de- 
fended. The  men  who  do  the  dying  and  the 
righting  seldom  know  what  the  quarrel  is 
about,  and  if  they  come  home  they  frequent- 
ly find  that  it  is  harder  to  make  a  living  in 
"  their  "  country  after  the  war  than  before  it. 

When  the  surplus  population  has  been  so 
nearly  killed  off  that  it  looks  as  if  the  remain- 
der of  the  common  people  can  scarcely  bear 
the  burden  of  taxation  that  is  to  pay  for  the 
war,  peace  is  declared,  and  there  is  great  re- 
joicing. 

Then  the  peasants  and  artisans  ( those  who 
are  not  buried  in  trenches )  go  back  to  work. 

The  precious  lives  of  those  who  brought 
on  the  war  have  never  been  endangered.  It 
was  not  necessary.  There  are  always  enough 
"  patriots  "  among  the  working  classes  to  do 

123 


Forgings  of  the  new 

the  fighting  ;  and  no  doubt  there  will  contin- 
ue to  be  so  as  long  as  a  man  on  one  side  of 
an  imaginary  line  can  be  trained  to  the  con- 
viction that  the  man  on  the  other  side  of  the 
line  is  his  natural  enemy. 

Here  are  two  adjoining  fields  of  grain. 

In  one  there  is  a  peasant,  a  Frenchman. 

In  the  other,  another  peasant,  a  German. 

The  same  sun  shines  on  both  ;  their  backs 
are  wet  by  the  same  passing  shower.  They 
confer  over  their  growing  crops,  and  they 
share  their  bread  and  wine  and  tobacco.  No 
thing  in  nature  divides  them. 

Now  comes  word  that  one  "  nation  "  has 
insulted  the  other  "  nation  "  and  these  poor 
toiling  wretches  and  their  tired  wives  and  chil- 
dred  feel  it  imperative  upon  them  to  burn 
each  other's  crops  and  shoot  each  other  full 
of  lead.  This  is  patriotism.  It  has  never 
yet  failed  ; — but  it  may. 

The  Franco-Prussian  war  of  1870  was  the 
first  milestone  of  doubt ;  for  the  first  time  in 
human  history  the  voice  of  humanity  then 
rose  from  the  ranks  against  the  voice  of 
"  patriotism." 

Six  years  before,  the  International  Work- 
ingmen's  Association  was  founded. 
124 


The  long  procession 

The  purpose  of  this  organization,  as  given 
by  its  founders,  was  to  weld  into  one  body 
the  whole  militant  proletariat  of  Europe  and 
America. 

It  was  a  bugle  note ;  a  promise  of  the 
dawn. 

The  Franco- Prussian  war  was  brought  on, 
as  every  other  war  is  brought  on,  not  by  the 
people,  but  by  the  exploiters  of  the  people. 
The  fatuous  Louis  Napoleon  aspired  to  im- 
itate the  first  distinguished  member  of  his 
family. 

Gigantic  schemes  of  fraudulent  speculation 
countenanced  and  fostered  by  those  in  high 
places,  absorbed  the  earnings  of  the  French 
people  and  involved  thousands  in  ruin.  Ju- 
dicial tribunals  were  debauched  and  the  pub- 
lic officials  rioted  in  corruption  and  extrava- 
gance. 

It  became  clear  that  only  a  war  could  divert 
the  public  mind  from  the  rottenness  of  the 
government;  and  a  war  with  Germany  was 
deliberately  decided  upon. 

A  shallow  pretext  was  found  in  the  claim 
of  a  Prussian  prince  to  the  Spanish  succes- 
sion ;  and  after  fanning  the  flame  of  French 
"  patriotism  "  the  poor,  foolish  French  people 

125 


Forgings  of  the  new 

became  eager  for  hostilities.  War  was  then 
declared  and  the  public  murder  began. 

In  the  face  of  this  infamous  proceeding 
the  International  Workingmen's  Association 
flung  its  clear  and  noble  protest. 

In  the  Reviel  (Paris)  of  July  12th,  1870, 
was  published  a  manifesto  "  to  the  working- 
men  of  all  nations  "  of  which  the  following  is 
an  extract : 

Once  more  on  the  pretext  of  European 
equilibrium,  of  national  honor,  the  peace  of 
the  world  is  menaced  by  political  ambitions. 
French,  German,  Spanish  workmen !  Let 
our  voices  unite  in  one  cry  of  reprobation 
against  war !  War  for  a  question  of  prepon- 
derance of  dynasty  can,  in  the  eyes  of  work- 
men, be  nothing  but  a  criminal  absurdity. 
In  answer  to  the  warlike  proclamations  of 
those  who  exempt  themselves  from  the  blood 
tax,  and  find  in  public  misfortunes  a  source 
of  fresh  speculations,  we  protest,  we  who 
want  peace,  labor  and  liberty  ! 

Brothers  of  Germany !  our  division  would 
only  result  in  the  complete  triumph  of  des- 
potism on  both  sides  of  the  Rhine.  Work- 
men of  all  countries  !  Whatever  may  for  the 
present  become  of  our  common  efforts,  we 
the  members  of  the  International  Working- 
men^  Association,  who  know  of  no  frontiers, 

126 


The  long  procession 

we  send  you  as  a  pledge  of  indissoluble  sol- 
idarity, the  good  wishes  and  salutations  of  the 
Workingmen  of  France. 

The  German  workingmen  in  many  cities 
replied  in  similar  manifestos. 

A  mass  meeting  of  workingmen  held  at 
Brunswick  on  July  16th  expressed  its  full 
agreement  with  the  Paris  manifesto,  spurned 
the  idea  of  national  antagonism  to  France  and 
concluded  its  resolutions  with  these  words : 

We  are  enemies  of  all  wars,  but  above  all 
of  dynastic  wars.  With  deep  sorrow  and 
grief  we  are  forced  to  undergo  a  defensive 
war  as  an  unavoidable  evil ;  but  we  call  at  the 
same  time  upon  the  whole  German  working 
class  to  render  the  recurrence  of  such  an  im- 
mense social  misfortune  impossible  by  vindi- 
cating for  the  people  themselves,  the  power 
to  decide  on  peace  and  war,  and  making  them 
masters  of  their  own  destinies. 

At  Chemintz,  a  meeting  of  delegates  repre- 
senting 50,000  Saxon  workingmen,  adopted 
unanimously  a  resolution  to  this  effect : 

In  the  name  of  the  German  Democracy, 
and  especially  of  the  workingmen  forming 
the  Socialist  Party,  we  declare  the  present 

127 


Forgings  of  the  new 

war  to  be  exclusively  dynastic.  We  are  hap- 
py to  grasp  the  fraternal  hand  stretched  out 
to  us  by  the  workingmen  of  France.  Mind- 
ful of  the  watchword  of  the  International 
Workingmen's  Association,  !<  Proletarians 
of  all  countries  unite,"  we  shall  never  forget 
that  the  workingmen  of  all  countries  are  our 
friends  and  the  despots  of  all  countries  our 
enemies. 

The  Berlin  branch  of  the  International  also 
replied  to  the  Paris  manifesto : 

We  join  with  heart  and  hand  your  protesta- 
tion. Solemnly  we  promise  that  neither  the 
sound  of  the  trumpet,  nor  the  roar  of  the 
cannon,  neither  victory  nor  defeat,  shall  di- 
vert us  from  our  common  work  for  the  union 
of  the  children  of  toil  of  all  countries. 

Great  sentiments  are  these.  History  has 
not  recorded  words  that  have  in  them  a  greater 
promise  for  the  race. 

In  these  manifestos  the  inarticulate  first 
became  articulate. 

The  Word  came  forth ;  the  word  that  no 
longer  is  the  workingman  to  look  for  a  liber- 
ator ;  he  is  now  to  begin  the  long  task  of 
liberating  himself.  In  these  days  of  war  went 
forth  that  word  which  one  ,day  shall  mean  no 
128 


The  long  procession 

war ;  the  word  that  shall  some  day  blossom 
into  this  manifesto : 

We  the  United  Workingmen  and  women 
of  the  world,  refuse  to  go  forth  to  kill  one 
another,  for  we  have  no  differences ;  if  you 
gentlemen  who  are  in  the  business  of  exploita- 
tion, or  land  gambling,  or  the  king  business, 
have  a  difference  and  wish  to  fight  it  out,  go 
forth  and  do  it  to  your  heart's  content ;  fignt 
till  you  are  all  exterminated  if  you  like ;  the 
world  will  be  all  the  better  for  honest  men  to 
live  in ! 

When  such  a  manifesto  can  go  forth  ;  when 
the  workers  of  the  world  are  so  unified  as  to 
be  no  longer  the  dupes  of  capitalism,  every 
throne  in  Europe  will  crumble  into  dust. 
For  without  an  obedient  common  people  to 
do  his  will,  a  king  is  a  sorry  spectacle.  When 
the  German  "  war-lord  "  shall  issue  an  order, 
and  the  German  people, — no  longer  his  "  sub- 
jects," but  their  own  masters, — shall  laugh  at 
his  presumption  ;  the  war-lord  will  be  a  sight 
for  derisive  contemplation  ;  a  useless  outworn 
bauble  which  a  free  people  will  not  suffer. 
The  German  throne  is  propped  by  German 
ignorance  and  fatuous  "love  of  country." 
And  yet  in  German  hearts  the  echo  of  the 

129 


Forgings  of  the  new 

manifesto  of  the  International  is  still  ringing. 
The  lesson  of  the  various  despotic  govern- 
ments,— forgetting  their  hatred  of  each  other 
and  uniting  to  stamp  out  this  organization  of 
workingmen, — has  not  been  read  in  vain. 
For  every  brave  member  of  the  International 
who  has  suffered  persecution,  imprisonment 
or  exile  a  thousand  of  his  working  country- 
men have  risen  up  to  bless  his  name. 

For  with  the  inception  of  the  International, 
the  long  procession  of  the  workers, — the  men 
with  sharp  features  and  hard  hands,  the  wom- 
en with  early  lined  foreheads,  and  the  tired 
little  children,  —  took  its  first  great  stride 
along  the  highway  of  liberty. 

In  the  breasts  of  the  workers  of  every  na- 
tion has  been  implanted  an  abounding  faith, 
not  in  the  outside  liberator,  but  in  themselves, 
their  power  and  their  possibilities. 

Slowly,  slowly  this  faith  is  growing ;  slowly 
but  surely,  until  the  ultimate  goal  is  as  inevi- 
table as  day  succeeding  night.  Slowly,  link  by 
link,  the  drag-chain  forges  about  the  wheels  of 
international  war,  until  the  great  black  chariot 
of  capitalism  shall  lie  helpless  and  abandoned 
before  the  will  of  the  marching  peoples;  march- 
ing, marching  to  the  land  of  heart's  desire. 

130 


THE  LOVE  THAT  IS  TO  COME 

"  Whenever  wounded  have  been  found  they  have 
received  all  the  care  that  our  own  soldiers  have, 
and  our  men  have  carried  them  on  their  backs  for 
miles  to  save  the  lives  of  these  unfortunates,  often 
risking  their  own  by  so  doing." — Extract  from  offi- 
cer's letter  from  the  Philippines. 

When  the  Colon  went  down  at  Santiago  a 
sailor  on  an  American  battleship  cried  out: 
"  Don't  cheer  fellows ;  the  poor  devils  are 
dying." 

Is  it  not  a  singular  thing  that  after  going  to 
such  infinite  trouble  and  expense  to  kill  men 
we  should  be  at  such  pains  to  save  their  lives 
as  soon  as  we  shall  not  quite  succeed  in  killing 
them  ? 

What  is  the  secret  of  this  instinctive  prompt- 
ing which,  in  the  presence  of  a  fallen  enemy, 
mixes  a  feeling  of  awe,  ay,  of  pity,  with  our 
victorious  rejoicings  ;  which  makes  us  some- 
how humble  and  ashamed  of  all  that  con- 
quering which  means  another's  undoing  ? 

It  is  that  at  the  center  of  things,  deep 
down  under  all  our  ignorance  and  vanity  and 
dull,  gross  selfishness,  there  dwells  a  spirit  of 
infinite  love,  patient,  untiring,  all-enduring ; 
biding  its  moment  of  apparition. 

131 


Forgings  of  the  new 

This  love  is  not  a  philosophical  conception 
of  the  intellect — child  of  Platonic  dreaming ; 
it  is  a  natural  passion.  Its  quality  is  singu- 
larly that  of  a  love  not  of  individual  for  indi- 
vidual, nor  of  individual  for  community  or 
country,  but  a  love  infinitely  greater,  more 
profound,  than  either  of  these  ;  a  love  which, 
finding  its  full  expression,  shall  one  day  make 
the  world  a  beautiful  place  to  live  in — a  love 
for  humanity  as  humanity. 

There  is  in  us  a  fellow  feeling,  a  yearning 
of  kindness  toward  other  human  beings  as 
human  beings,  which  is  not  related  to  the 
character  of  those  who  excite  it.  It  exhibits 
itself  unmistakably  in  the  fireman,  with  blis- 
tered flesh,  hair  and  eyebrows  burned  to 
crisp,  saving  the  child  from  the  fire  ;  in  the 
stripling  youth  leaping  into  the  waves  to  suc- 
cor a  drowning  man,  and  in  the  simplest  act 
of  courtesy  we  render  to  a  stranger. 

The  habitual  expression  of  this  love  would 
long  since  have  become  universal  if  all  society 
were  not  so  organized  as  to  extinguish  it. 

Society  as  it  now  exists  is  unconscious- 
ly an  organized  conspiracy  against  the  sane 
and  logical  development  of  every  human  soul 
in  it. 
132 


The  love  that  is  to  come 

It  places  all  the  temptations  on  the  side  of 
inhumanity.  Society  makes  it  vastly  easier 
today  to  do  wrong  than  to  do  right. 

Most  human  beings,  even  soldiers  and 
priests,  are  doing  the  best  they  think  they 
can.  And  out  of  the  blighting,  calculating 
intellectual  darkness  in  which  they  serve  as 
consenting  instruments  of  killing  or  defense 
of  killing,  there  sometimes  shoots  a  gleam  of 
their  higher  selves  ;  their  broader  humanity ; 
the  undiscovered,  unrecognized  thing  they 
are  yet  to  be. 

Hence  these  relentings ;  this  carrying  of 
wounded  brown  men  on  backs  through  impas- 
sible morasses ;  and  the  hush-word  breathed 
from  powder-grimed  lips  at  warship's  sinking. 

These  singular  relentings  are  but  glimpses 
of  this  indwelling  love,  yearning  to  express 
itself  in  an  exalted  human  life ;  they  testify 
to  the  existence  of  the  Higher  Law  cease- 
lessly at  work,  slowly,  patiently  forming  from 
the  casual  the  habitual ;  they  prove  the  pres- 
ence, the  involuntary  recognition  and  worship, 
of  the  Ideal  of  Man  in  each  man,  the  flower 
of  which  is  Brotherhood. 

And  some  day  this  love  for  humanity,  this 
spirit  of  love  in  us,  will  find  national  expres- 


Forgings  of  the  new 

sion  before  the  murderous  act  of  war  instead 
of  after.  It  is  even  now  coming  to  flood  in 
individuals,  in  peace  societies,  and  in  certain 
brave  resistants  to  enforced  military  service. 
And  when  at  last  we  come  to  realize  that 
the  command  "Thou  shalt  not  kill"  means 
actually  that  we  stop  killing,  this  upspringing 
godhood  in  us  will  impel  us  to  obey  it.  And 
in  our  obeying  it  a  new  day  will  dawn,  a 
glorious  day  of  strifeless  progress ;  and  a 
great  all-embracing  Peace  will  breathe  upon 
the  world,  deep,  pure,  satisfying  to  the  long- 
yearning  human  soul. 


134 


GOOD  AND  EVIL 

"  Oh,  East  is  East,  and  West  is  West,  and  never  the 

twain  shall  meet, 
Till  Earth  and  Sky  stand  presently  at  God's  great 

Judgment  Seat ; 
But  there  is  neither  East  nor  West,  Border  nor 

Breed  nor  Birth 
When  two  strong  men  stand  face  to  face,  tho'  they 

come  from  the  ends  of  the  earth." 

— Rudyard  Kipling. 

DeSegurs,  in  his  memoirs,  says  that  when 
the  First  Consul  reached  the  Isle  of  Poplars 
he  stopped  at  Rousseau's  grave. 

"  It  would  have  been  better  for  the  repose 
of  France  if  that  man  had  never  lived/'  said  he. 

"  And  why,  Citizen  Consul  ?  " 

"  Because  he  is  the  man  who  made  the 
French  Revolution." 

"  It  seems  to  me  that  you,  Citizen  Consul, 
cannot  complain  of  the  French  Revolution." 

"Well,"  replied  Napoleon,  "the  future 
must  decide  whether  it  would  not  have  been 
better  for  the  repose  of  the  world  if  neither 
myself  nor  Rousseau  had  ever  lived." 

The  controversy  as  to  whether  there  is  an 
Absolute  Good  and  an  Absolute  Evil  has  en- 

135 


Forgings  of  the  new 

gaged  the  speculation  of  philosophers  and 
dialecticians  ever  since  the  human  mind  be- 
gan to  dabble  in  abstractions. 

So  far  as  concrete  illustrations  have  ever 
been  available  these  elements  have  been  em- 
bodied only  in  the  comparative  degree. 

In  every  man,  however  ignoble,  there  is 
something  which  may  be  classed  as  good ; 
and  in  every  man,  however  exalted,  there  is 
something  which  may  be  classed  as  evil. 

Good  and  evil  are  purely  relative,  and  one 
could  never  have  been  discerned  or  recognized 
without  the  presence  of  the  other. 

If  there  had  never  been  what  we  call  a  bad 
man  we  would  not  yet  know  what  a  good  man 
is.  We  comprehend  clearly  one  principle 
only  as  the  opposite  principle  is  made  mani- 
fest. 

Caiaphas  thus  helps  us  to  understand  Jesus ; 
and  Napoleon  helps  us  to  understand  Rous- 
seau. 

Sycophancy  is  never  so  transparent  as  when 
confronted  by  honesty.  Light  banishes  dark- 
ness ;  heat  banishes  cold. 

It  would  not  have  been  better  for  the  re* 
pose  of  the  world  if  neither  Rousseau  nor 
Napoleon  had  lived. 
136 


Good  and  evil 

Repose  is  not  slothful  unprogression, — the 
dull  incomprehension  of  the  mollusk.  Re- 
pose is  the  fine  balance  and  harmony  of  high- 
ly sensitive  organisms. 

The  writings  of  Jean  Jacques  stirred  the 
masses  from  their  dull  submission  to  tyranny. 
The  burning  of  his  books  in  the  market- 
place kindled  a  fire  which  illuminated  all 
Europe  and  lighted  up  the  fens  and. morasses 
of  kingcraft. 

Then  followed  the  French  Revolution. 

The  French  Revolution  was  a  blow  in  the 
dark,  struck  by  discontent.  It  destroyed  in 
its  rage  the  only  men  qualified  to  serve  it — 
the  Physiocrats :  Quesnay,  Turgot,  Condor- 
cet,  Mirabeau. 

Napoleon  stopped  the  blind  slaughter  by 
substituting  slaughter  with  a  purpose.  He 
had  a  program  ;  and  he  understood  the  peo- 
ple. He  knew  the  mind  darkened  by  tyran- 
ny. He  knew  that  as  soon  as  quiet  was  re- 
stored the  people  would  yearn  for  some  ty- 
rant to  rule  them.  Habits  of  mind  are  very 
strong.  The  Americans  once  invited  George 
Washington  to  become  king. 

Napoleon  rode  to  power  on  the  rebound. 
He  dramatized  the  principle  opposite  to  that 

137 


Forgings  of  the  new 

of  Rousseau.  These  two  men  gave  to  the 
world  a  standard  of  judgment.  Both  lives 
served. 

Through  the  study  of  Rousseau's  writings 
and  Napoleon's  acts  the  world  climbed  to  an 
intelligence  which  renders  another  Napoleon 
— on  the  same  plane — impossible. 

Napoleon  was  made  possible  by  a  single 
fact :  he  found  people  willing  to  obey. 

In  the  absence  of  public  ignorance  Napo- 
leon could  have  been  no  more  destructive 
than  an  ordinary  thug. 

He  showed  to  the  world  the  awful  price  of 
ignorance  when  paid  in  blood. 

Napoleon's  organizing  ability  finds  its  mod- 
ern counterpart  in  those  shrewd  entrepreneurs 
who  are  doing  on  the  plane  of  industry  what 
Napoleon  did  on  the  plane  of  mortality. 

The  price  of  ignorance  which  the  world 
paid  to  Napoleon  in  blood  it  is  paying  today 
to  these  gentlemen ;  in  worry,  physical  and 
spiritual  starvation,  and  degrading  economic 
fear. 

The  principle  known  as-  good  can  make 
headway  against  the  principle  called  evil  only 
as  the  intelligence  of  humanity  rises  to  the 
height  from  which  these  principles  can  be  dis- 

138 


Good  and  evil 

cerned  under  the  various  shifting  forms  in 
which  they  are  constantly  finding  residence. 

Every  soul  seeks  what  it  believes  to  be 
good  for  itself.  Napoleon  believed  it  to  be 
good  to  conquer  Europe.  The  burglar  be- 
lieves it  is  for  his  good  to  rob  your  house. 

There  are  really  no  good  men  and  no  bad 
men  ;  there  are  only  intelligence  and  ignor- 
ance. 

The  military  genius  can  express  itself  only 
as  it  finds  absurd  individuals  who  will  wear 
cheap  buttons  of  brass,  walk  together  in  the 
mud  and  fight  for  they  do  not  know  whom 
for  they  do  not  know  what. 

The  genius  of  exploitation  can  express  it- 
self only  as  it  finds  equally  absurd  individu- 
als who  are  content  to  starve  in  a  world  of 
plenty,  and  give  up  the  needed  things  they 
create  to  those  who  do  not  know  what  to  do 
with  them  after  they  receive  them. 

As  we  banish  ignorance,  Napoleons  and 
exploiters  and  burglars,  finding  no  opportun- 
ities for  their  talents  in  the  direction  of  what 
is  called  evil,  must  perforce  become  expres- 
sions of  the  opposite  principle,  which  is  called 
good. 


139 


THE  HIGHER  STRUGGLE 

"  One  who  never  turned  his  back  but  marched  breast 

forward, 

Never  doubted  clouds  would  break, 
Never  dreamed,  though  right  were  worsted,  wrong 

would  triumph, 
Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better,  sleep 

to  wake." 

— Browning. 

Just  before  his  death-illness,  Robert  Brown- 
ing wrote  four  verses  as  an  epilogue  to  his 
poems.  The  verse  here  quoted  is  the  third. 

One  evening  he  was  reading  this  verse 
from  a  proof  to  his  daughter-in-law  and  his 
sister. 

ft  It  almost  looks  like  bragging  to  say  this," 
he  said,  "  and  as  if  I  ought  to  cancel  it ;  but 
it's  the  simple  truth ;  and  as  it's  true,  it  shall 
stand." 

Few  of  us  can  sing  such  a  swan-song  as 
that. 

It  is  the  song  of  a  soul  whose  battles  have 
been  fought  in  an  arena  of  the  higher  ether. 

Life  has  such  struggles ;  struggles  apart 
from  considerations  of  the  material ;  strug- 
gles of  the  soul  alone,  free  from  the  gross 
demands  or  impositions  of  the  body. 

140 


The  higher  struggle 

It  is  from  such  a  struggle  that  the  soul  can 
rise  serene.  Nothing  of  the  sordid  pulls  it 
from  its  pedestal. 

Such  strife  is  epic  in  its  character. 

Failure  even,  in  such  an  atmosphere,  takes 
on  a  certain  dignity. 

But  there  is  a  kind  of  struggle  which  by  its 
very  nature  stultifies,  degrades  and  dishonors ; 
and  into  this  loathsome  contest  are  driven  the 
great  masses  of  our  common  humanity.  To 
lose  at  it  is  to  be  contemptible ;  to  win  at  it 
is  to  be  infamous. 

No  one  who  is  raised  above  the  necessity 
of  fighting  his  fellows  for  his  bread  can  esti- 
mate or  understand  the  effect  of  such  warfare 
upon  individual  character. 

There  is  something  so  utterly  false  and 
degrading  in  one  man  striving  against  another 
man  for  bread  in  a  land  of  limitless  plenty 
that  no  one  can  emerge  from  such  a  strife 
with  dignity.  For  such  a  one  the  epic  life  is 
an  impossibility. 

There  is  no  power  in  the  universe,  god, 
man,  or  devil,  that  can  raise  the  competitive 
struggle  above  the  plane  of  vulgarity. 

By  refusing  to  abolish  this  struggle  we  keep 
the  noblest  attributes  of  the  human  soul  in 

141 


Forgings  of  the  new 

abeyance  ;  for  it  is  not  until  the  bodily  wants 
are  satisfied  that  the  spirit  rises  to  aspiration. 

We  do  not  yet  know  human  nature ;  its 
beauty  and  its  divine  possibilities.  When  it 
shines  in  a  personality  like  Browning  or  Plato 
we  scarcely  understand  it. 

Yet  the  intellectual  eminence  of  Browning 
and  Plato  is  our  true  estate. 

That  we  are  still  grovelling  on  all  fours  is 
our  own  doing.  No  natural  law  keeps  the 
soul  in  the  stomach. 

Browning's  note  is  the  true  human  note ; 
but  would  it  have  been  sounded  so  positively 
— nay,  would  it  have  been  sounded  perhaps 
at  all — had  his  struggles  been  dragged  down 
to  the  plane  of  the  economic  ? 

Would  his  stupendous  contribution  to  the 
world's  literature  ever  have  been  made  had 
he  worked  ten  hours  a  day  at  an  uncongenial 
task  to  support  the  woman  he  loved  ? 

Leisure  for  research  and  for  writing  enabled 
him  to  do  the  world  a  priceless  service.  His 
life  and  his  message  refute  utterly  the  stupid 
cry  of  the  schoolmen  for  the  spur  of  neces- 
sity ;  that  outworn  creed  which  any  faith  in 
life  or  spiritual  discernment  would  long  since 
have  left  in  the  shadows.  It  is  a  shallow 
142 


The  higher  struggle 

vision  which  does  not  see  that  there  will  be 
struggles  enough — struggles  which  will  test 
all  the  faith  and  the  strength  and  the  man- 
hood which  Browning  pictures  —  after  we 
have  raised  ourselves  above  the  plane  of  the 
brute. 


143 


SHE  WHO  IS  TO  COME 

"  The  National  Congress  of  Mothers  will  convene 
in  Washington  on  the  25th  and  last  three  days. 
The  physical  and  mental  welfare  of  children  will 
be  the  subject  of  the  Congress." 

— N.  Y.  Sun. 

Madame  De  Stael  once  asked  Napoleon 
Bonaparte,  "  General,  what  woman  in  France 
do  you  the  most  admire  ? "  "  The  one  who 
has  the  most  children,"  replied  that  dis- 
tinguished homicide. 

Napoleon  harped  on  this  string  a  good 
deal.  "  What  France  needs  is  mothers,"  he 
kept  saying. 

What  he  meant  was :  "  What  I  need  is 
soldiers." 

The  French  women  did  the  best  they 
could.  One  would  have  thought  that  child- 
birth was  a  pleasant  pastime  from  the  way  in 
which  they  furnished  food  for  European  can- 
non. 

Perhaps,  here  and  there,  a  woman  whose 
soul  had  been  born,  recoiled  at  being  a  breed- 
ing creature  for  a  man's  ambition.  Most  of 
them,  however,  accepted  the  situation  and 
strove  to  please  the  emperor. 

We  are  the  creatures  of  our  environment. 

144 


She  who  is  to  come 

Mother-love  is  the  symbol  of  the  Divine 
love.  Even  when  it  is  bound  by  four  walls 
there  is  something  godlike  about  it. 

But  when  it  lifts  itself  above  its  own  do- 
mesticity and  shines  out  upon  the  whole 
world,  it  takes  on  the  radiance  of  a  Sun  :  all 
life  is  warmed  by  it. 

Mother-love  extended  to  all  the  race  is  the 
ideal  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

Only  here  and  there  a  woman  dimly  sees 
this  truth  and  gives  her  sons  and  daughters  a 
sense  of  race-obligation, — teaches  them  that 
unless  they  hold  all  life  in  their  conscious- 
ness they  will  but  swing  round  in  a  petty 
circle,  their  lives  useless  to  the  race. 

Most  women  ( even  working  women — im- 
itatively )  teach  their  daughters  little  graceful 
arts  and  things.  They  play  a  little,  paint  a 
little,  and  know  a  superficial  bit  of  the  con- 
tinental languages.  This  makes  them  "at- 
tractive." If  they  are  made  sufficiently  at- 
tractive they  may  get  a  husband  well-to-do 
enough  to  continue  their  amiable  mediocrity ; 
— until  the  children  begin  to  come ;  then 
their  pretty  accomplishments  fall  into  disuse. 

When  girlhood  is  given  up  to  petty  things 
there  can  be  no  fit  preparation  for  mother- 

145 


Forgings  of  the  new 

hood.  Bearing  a  child  is  but  the  beginning 
of  motherhood.  Motherhood  is  spiritual, 
not  physical. 

What  Napoleon  wanted  of  the  French 
women  was  reproduction,  not  motherhood. 
Motherhood  would  have  baffled  him. 

Motherhood  produces  men  like  Jesus  and 
Mazzini  and  Abraham  Lincoln. 

It  is  mere  fecundity  that  produces  a  Nero, 
or  a  Napoleon,  or  a  Charles  I. 

Motherhood  produces  spirituality. 

Fecundity  produces  human  animals. 

Josephine  was  a  woman  who  had  risen  to 
consciousness.  She  was  a  widow.  She  had 
a  son  by  a  former  husband.  Napoleon  loved 
her  as  much  as  he  could  love  any  woman. 
We  can  appreciate  high  qualities  in  others 
only  when  we  ourselves  have  spirituality 
enough  to  discern  them.  Josephine's  wit 
and  wisdom  brought  out  all  the  good  that 
was  resident  in  Bonaparte's  nature.  But  he 
put  her  away  for  Marie  Louise.  Why  ? 

Because  he  wanted  another  kind  of  woman. 

He  wanted  a  brood-mare.  That  was  his 
polite  word :  pouliniere. 

It  is  this  idea, — what  we  may  term  the 
Napoleonic  idea — that  woman  should  be  a 

146 


She  who  is  to  come 

• 

breeding  hack,  that  has  kept  womankind  in 
slavery. 

Woman  has  always  been  a  greater  slave  to 
conventionality  than  man,  because  she  has 
always  been  man's  property. 

In  the  mid-century  past  she  did  not  dare 
even  to  have  a  brain.  It  was  unwomanly. 

Aurore  Dupin  had  to  call  herself  George 
Sand. 

Mary  Ann  Evans  had  to  call  herself  George 
Eliot. 

These  great  women,  towering  above  the 
petty  masculine  intellects  of  their  age,  did  not 
dare  to  let  the  public  know  they  were  not 
men.  Why  ? 

Because  everybody  believed  that  women 
should  be  breeding ;  not  writing  books. 

Women  themselves  believed  this ;  they 
thought  Sand  and  Eliot  must  have  horns  and 
a  tail  when  it  began  to  be  whispered  about 
that  they  were  women. 

They  could  not  conceive  the  idea  of  wom- 
an apart  from  her  functions  as  a  female  ani- 
mal. 

They  never  dreamed  that  women  could 
own  their  own  bodies  and  yet  be  mothers, — 
spiritual  mothers. 

147 


Forgings  of  the  new 

Susan  B.  Anthony  has  never  married ;  yet 
her  children  are  among  the  finest  women  in 
America  today — the  fittest  to  be  mothers. 

She  has  fitted  more  daughters  for  mother- 
hood than  any  ten  thousand  women  taken  at 
random  in  the  United  States. 

Her  daughters  are  fittest  to  be  mothers 
because  they  have  been  lifted  into  conscious- 
ness ;  they  are  fittest  to  be  mothers  because 
they  are  getting  a  glimpse  of  what  real  moth- 
erhood— spiritual  motherhood — is. 

Because  Susan  B.  Anthony  cared  more  for 
spiritual  children  than  for  physical  children 
she  was  blacklisted.  Hotels  would  not  ac- 
cept her  as  a  guest. 

Once  at  a  public  meeting  someone  threw 
a  rose  at  her.  It  confused  and  embarrassed 
her,  she  said.  If  it  had  been  a  carrot  or  a 
rotten  egg  she  would  have  known  how  to  re- 
ceive it. 

For  over  fifty  years  she  was  hooted  and 
hissed  and  insulted  by  the  brood-mares  and 
their  squires,  because  she  had  dared  to  think 
more  nobly  of  womanhood  than  they  did. 

The  other  women  believed  that  the  only 
respectable  service  their  sex  could  render  the 
world  was  to  breed ;  and  they  bit  and  scratched 

148 


She  who  is  to  come 

and  spat  at  the  noble  hand  which  reached  to 
lead  them  out  of  the  dark. 

They  liked  the  Napoleonic  idea  best.  It 
was  the  idea  they  were  used  to. 

It  had  been  taught  them  by  their  mothers, 
and  they  themselves  were  busy  teaching  it  to 
their  daughters. 

And  the  lesson  was  well  learned. 

That  is  why  the  present  industrial  system 
is  possible. 

The  Napoleons  of  industry  need  soldiers 
in  their  battles,  too. 

The  brood-mares  are  furnishing  the  labor 
market. 

A  nation  or  a  race  will  never  rise  higher 
than  its  mothers. 

If  women  willed  it  so,  they  could  stop  the 
slaughter  of  human  beings  in  war  ;  they  could 
stop  the  grinding  up  of  human  life  in  our  bar- 
barous industrial  system. 

It  needs  but  for  them  to  say  :  We  will  not 
bear  children  for  your  cannons,  nor  for  your 
hideous  industrial  treadmills ;  life  is  too  sa- 
cred and  the  agony  of  childbirth  is  too  great. 

Why,  then,  do  they  not  say  it  ? 

Because  they  do  not  think  of  it.  They 
have  been  trained  the  other  way.  They  see 

149 


Forgings  of  the  new 

only  their  own  children,  and  hope  that  they, 
somehow,  may  escape  the  common  lot.  Their 
sense  of  maternity  is  limited  as  an  animal's 
is  limited, — to  their  own  young. 

Motherhood  is  spiritual,  not  physical. 

No  woman  is  a  mother  until  every  life  is 
as  sacred  to  her  as  that  which  comes  from 
her  own  birth-agony. 

When  she  rises  to  this  consciousness  she 
never  can  be  proud  of  a  soldier  son,  nor  a  son 
who  wins  success  by  exploiting  other  lives. 

If  she  cares  for  a  child  because  it  is  hers, 
and  fits  and  educates  it  only  to  "  succeed  in 
life,"  ignoring  the  common  life  in  which 
"  success  "  must  be  won, — then  she  is  on  the 
plane  of  the  jungle-folk ;  and  the  tiger-cub 
will  show  in  her  offspring. 

Until  a  woman  is  spiritually  fit  for  mother- 
hood she  does  the  world  scant  service  by 
bringing  children  into  it. 

We  have  had  somewhat  too  much  of  the 
Napoleonic  idea. 

When  motherhood  comes,  manhood  will 
come ;  race-consciousness  will  come ;  peace 
and  love  and  fellowship  will  come. 

When  upon  the  stepping  stones  of  a  few 
more  Anthonies  women  shall  rise  to  self- 
ISO 


She  who  is  to  come 

ownership,  rise  to  recognize  themselves  as 
human  beings, — not  chattel  property, — when 
woman  once  shall  be  free  to  get  her  bread 
without  selling  her  body  either  in  the  mar- 
riage state  or  out  of  it,  motherhood  will  be- 
gin, and  the  birth-era  of  a  race  will  dawn 
more  noble,  chaste,  more  goodly  great,  than 
all  the  past  has  known. 


151 


WHEN  THE  EARTH  TREMBLES 

It  is  strange  that  only  in  the  presence  of  a 
catastrophe  it  should  become  clear  that  there 
is  nothing  in  the  world  worth  preserving  ex- 
cept human  life. 

When  the  earth  trembles,  soldiers  forget 
that  their  mission  is  to  kill ;  policemen  pay 
little  attention  to  the  property  they  are  hired 
to  protect,  and  the  transient  and  worthless 
character  of  things,  valued  beside  life,  forces 
itself  abruptly  upon  the  common  comprehen- 
sion. 

This  great  truth,  now  obscured  by  almost 
every  convention  of  human  society,  and  col- 
lectively recognized  only  in  moments  of  cos- 
mic threatening,  must  eventually  be  wrought 
into  the  fibre  of  all  human  thought  if  organic 
life  is  finally  to  escape  annihilation. 

Mont  Pelee  has  given  its  warning  to  this 
generation,  and  Vesuvius  smokes  his  pipe 
grimly  above  Nature's  powder-magazine. 

Slowly  the  great  crust  of  the  earth  con- 
tracts, forcing  to  the  surface  its  liquid  interior 
fires  ;  slowly  at  the  poles  the  ice-caps  thicken 
storing  up  the  destruction  of  another  glacial 
slide.  All  this  bespeaks  the  inevitable :  that 

U2 


When  the  earth  trembles 

the  earth  will  some  day  be  like  the  moon, 
dragging  around  her  orbit,  a  barren  waste, 
where  once  was  warmth  and  plenty. 

And  what  of  the  life  for  which  the  un- 
counted ages  seem  but  a  preparation  ? 

When  the  hour  of  extinction  comes  is  hu- 
manity to  be  exterminated  like  rats  in  a  trap? 
When  that  awful  hour  at  last  arrives  is  it  to 
behold  human  beings  still  fighting  one  another 
in  vulgar  economic  strife — like  swine  scram- 
bling for  food,  treading  the  bounty  of  the 
earth  in  the  mire — while  the  very  Cosmos 
calls  for  a  rescuing  hand  ? 

In  the  face  of  all  terrifying  visitations  of 
inorganic  might  there  is  one  power  in  the 
universe  that  can  cope  with  it  and  overcome 
it :  intelligence.  Man  possesses  it  and  it  is  am- 
plified in  direct  proportion  to  his  use  of  it. 

If  the  race  is  finally  to  endure,  we  must 
learn  how  to  use  this  great  power  in  the  pres- 
ervation of  life,  and  we  must  begin  thus  to 
use  it  very  soon. 

The  desire  to  preserve  life  does  not  now 
animate  human  society.  In  the  United  States 
alone,  every  year,  more  human  beings  die  of 
diseases  induced  by  underfeeding  than  were 
destroyed  by  the  eruption  at  Martinique. 

153 


Forgings  of  the  new 

In  a  land  of  plenty  one  thing  only  is  re- 
sponsible for  this  iniquity  :  disregard  for  hu- 
man life. 

The  Mont  Pelee  of  our  maladjusted  society 
is  always  in  eruption ;  the  lava  of  a  purblind 
social  selfishness  is  always  smothering  the 
one  thing  society  ever  can  look  to  for  its 
preservation. 

Nothing  can  preserve  life  except  life  itself. 

A  prayer  to  god  or  devil  has  never  yet 
made  it  rain  or  stopped  a  flow  of  lava. 

If  the  race  of  men  is  ever  yet  to  fulfill  a 
noble  destiny,  man  himself  must  be  the  in- 
strument ;  in  him  are  all  the  possibilities  of 
the  force  he  calls  God. 

If  we  are  careless  of  life,  who  is  to  work 
out  life's  final  preservation  ?  A  moment  of 
cosmic  terror  is  not  the  time  to  pray ;  it  is 
the  time  to  do. 

There  may  be  born  tonight  in  the  squalor 
of  a  New  York  tenement,  reared  upon  alley 
refuse  and  turned  out  to  tramp,  a  man  who 
has  in  his  brain  if  developed  the  power  to 
save  the  race  from  extinction.  By  destroying 
any  life  we  may  destroy  the  life. 

It  is  foolish  for  us  to  wait  for  a  cataclysm 
to  rouse  our  intelligence  to  action.  If  we 
154 


When  the  earth  trembles 

only  will  it  so  we  can  perceive  elemental 
truths  without  earthquakes  to  stimulate  their 
perception. 

If  the  collective  will  of  the  world  today 
would  even  follow  the  truth  it  already  per- 
ceives, it  could  atone  for  the  past  ages  of 
bloodshed  and  brutality  and  waste  of  life  by 
making  the  next  thousand  years  ring  through- 
out the  universe. 

Is  it  nothing  that  a  hundred  tons  may  be 
moved  like  a  feather  by  the  power  transmitted 
through  a  copper  thread — plus  intelligence  ? 

Is  it  nothing  that  by  the  pulsations  in  a 
medium  so  subtile  that  the  senses  of  man 
cannot  perceive  it,  Marconi  signals  across  the 
ocean  waste  ? 

Intelligence  knows  the  force,  and  the  me- 
dia through  which  force  must  act. 

Who  then  shall  say  we  may  not  yet  signal ; 
nay,  travel  from  planet  to  planet  ? 

Who  shall  say  that  when  the  hour  of  earth- 
extinction  comes  man  may  not  have  foretold 
its  coming  and  prepared  his  flight  to  Jupiter, 
whose  crust  has  been  hardening  through  the 
centuries  in  preparation  for  organic  life  ? 

Who  knows  how  many  worlds  in  all  the 
vast  universe  flung  from  the  blistering  suns 

155 


Forgings  of  the  new 

have  been  prepared  for  organic  life,  and  have 
whirled  their  way  through  the  ages  to  extinc- 
tion without  producing  anything  so  great  as 
man? 

Who  knows  but  on  some  distant  planet 
swinging  around  some  splendid  sun,  a  race 
of  beings  like  to  us  has  grown  out  of  the  vul- 
gar mire  of  competitive  warfare  and  is  work- 
ing— all  its  units  together — in  a  godlike  har- 
mony, flinging  electric  signals  at  our  earth ; 
signals  which  our  undeveloped  intelligence 
cannot  yet  recognize  ? 

The  race  cannot  fathom  cosmic  depths  in  a 
moment — or  in  a  generation.  The  earth  may 
yet  endure  for  many  thousands  of  years  ;  but 
to  save  life  at  the  end  we  must  begin  to  value 
life  now.  The  great  forces  which  today  turn 
the  wheels  of  industry :  steam,  electricity,  are 
the  fruitition  of  ages  and  ages  of  collective 
intelligence  acting  cumulatively.  A  century 
is  but  a  day  of  cosmic  life ;  but  every  genera- 
tion of  men,  living  its  little  span,  may  serve 
in  making  life  better  and  brighter  ;  in  lifting 
the  race  onward  and  upward  toward  its  now 
obscure  but  someday  manifest  destiny. 

And  now,  more  than  in  any  other  period 
of  recorded  history,  dimly,  but  hopefully,  the 
156 


When  the  earth  trembles 

dream  of  a  noble  race  life  is  possessing  the 
hearts  of  the  people. 

In  the  last  fifty  years  there  has  been  born, 
here  upon  the  earth,  an  ideal  of  a  harmonious 
society ;  a  society  that  shall  re-coup  the  age- 
long waste  of  human  life  ;  a  society  that  shall 
produce  a  thousand  Marconis  in  a  single  gen- 
eration, when  once  its  beneficent  influence 
shall  have  shone  upon  the  race ;  a  society 
that  at  last  shall  lift  man  out  of  the  mire  and 
fit  the  humblest  child  to  contribute  all  the 
intelligence  in  the  inmost  recesses  of  his 
brain  to  the  uplifting  and  glorifying  of  the 
race ;  a  society  in  which  the  collective  will 
shall  leave  the  Mont  Pelees  of  the  globe  to 
belch  in  gloomy  grandeur  over  barren  wastes, 
while  in  the  pleasant  places  of  the  earth  men 
and  women  and  children  live  comrade-lives 
among  the  birds  and  flowers,  sending  love- 
beckonings  to  the  friendly  stars. 


157 


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